These results demonstrate a significantly poor level of engagement with consumers and exposed [...] Understanding consumer interaction at a deeper level of analysis allows us to measure the value of advertising investment Nope, these results demonstrate a total lack your understanding of a very simple consumer preference: Fuck off and stuff your advertisement where the sun don't shine.
The whole quote is a longwinded marketing-droid newspeak for "we don't yet know how to force ourselves on these people who don't want to see our stuff".
I sincerely hope the piracy scene will rise to the challenge. A few years from now, you will have two jobs: Removing the copy protection and removing the ads.
Are they really amazed that it could slip from a person's hand and go flying? Don't know about them, but I am, yes. I've played bowling, tennis and baseball for a couple hours each and I have no idea how you could let go of the Wiimote. Never happened neither to me nor any of the other players. You'd have to be very careless to do it. You know, like in dropping your notebook because you only gripped it with one sweaty hand by the very edge and then suing the manufacturer for a replacement...
By now I have quite a few hours of playtime down, most of it with friends. Not once has a Wiimote left the hands of its player, even though some of us have played with enthusiasm. If you look at the videos on YouTube, you'll see that in those where the straps broke, there are always two things:
a) The player's hands were sweaty, and I don't mean a little bit b) The Wiimote was literally thrown into a wall at full speed, as in "everything you've got".
Yeah, you can get into the game, but if you stand in your living room throwing something at the TV with the maximum amount of power you can muster, then anyone with more than 3 brain cells should realize he's doing something potentially dangerous.
Plus there is no advantage I've noticed to putting that much power into your movements. In all the games I've played so far, timing is more important than raw power.
Can one explicitly exclude oneself from a class-action lawsuit?
I mean, these guys are bringing a suit "on behalf of the owners of a Wii". I won a Wii and I very much want to make it very clear that they are not acting on my behalf, nor with my consent, and quite the contrary.
Can I write to the court? Is there any way to say "whoever they say they're working for, I'm in that list but they're not my friends" ?
Utter nonsense. The fact that you call them "windos dudes" pretty much indicates your bias and their ability. Yes, I havev prejudices against both windos and its fans. However, those prejudices are born out of almost 10 years of experience seeing both windos and various Unixes work (or fail to do so) in various corporate environments.
I believe windos is a piece of crap, and I believe so because I've experienced most of its failures and shortcomings firsthand. My private mailserver has a higher availability and longer uptimes than the corporate exchange cluster in every company I've seen so far. And no, you can't tell me it's got less volume, it's been running a dozen or so mailing lists for several years.
Windows clearly has a more robust permission scheme with its ACL's and user rights policies, Which I have not ever seen used properly, anywhere. A friend of mine and one of the few windos admins who can compete with the average Unix admin in skill and know-how has a few things to say about Active Directory. Very impressive things. But one of them is that very few people really understand it and almost nobody uses it.
Windows group policies is something with no real equivelent in UNIX either. I happen to know SELinux a little. Well, ok, I've held presentations at international conferences. SELinux smokes everything windos has to offer, permission and policy-wise. You're right, it's not an equivalent...
The market has spoken, this game was not worthy. Your concept of market is about 100 years outdated. Only in rare cases are the "not worthy" products the ones who get axed. In the majority of cases, bad accounting, bad management decisions or simply the fact that the hedge fund who owns 60% of you needs to improve its cash flow before month's end determine the fate of a company or product.
So MS is once again leveraging it's monopoly on the desktop to gain market share where they can't dominate without (game consoles). Wasn't there an antitrust case or something?
From a robust permission scheme, remote control of group policies and really easy deployment there's nothing like Windows.
Except any of the many Unix versions.
One of the first companies I worked for had a network of mostly Windos with some Solaris machines for the developers. Me and another guy managed the Solaris machines in addition to our regular jobs, and it was painless, smooth and easy. The windos dudes spent most of their days cussing at the inabilities of their OS.
#15: True, but how often do you really need today's date? For me, that's once every few days and it really isn't much of a problem to move to top-right and click on the time.
#14: Stay away from the f&%$ing desktop! It's enough that my real-world desktop is messy. The #1 windos insanity is the cluttered desktop every other user has. I've seen more than enough windos desktops that were literally filled with icons. And the worst thing to put on a desktop is interactive elements ("widgets"). Why? Because they'll always be covered by some window. In the best case, I have to shuffle my windows around to access it. Nope, no way. Dashboard is pretty good, because I can still see the desktop (with all windows), so I can read the IP, number or other data I want to enter into a widget. And it's only there when I need it, not running in the background all the time.
#13: Ok, what are they talking about? My Finder has context menus.
#12: Someone didn't get either the Dock nor Expose. Dude, what you want is Expose and it does a great job at giving you an overview of all the open documents you've got - either in total or per application, whatever you prefer. The Dock's job is a different one and I'd rather have it do one job well than twenty jobs shabby.
#10: Please go into a corner and die quietly. Leave the Dock uncluttered, you fools! Trying to shove everyone of the 500 small tools you have installed into one menu is exactly why the windos "Start" menu is the craphola it is. In case you've been living under a rock for the past few years: You can use Spotlight to very quickly find and launch your non-common apps, or install Quicksilver, which does an even better job and is by far the best way to start apps invented, ever (Linux users: Katapult on KDE stole the idea, though it's not as feature-complete).
#8: Err. Are we talking about the same OSX here? Ok, I only setup one printer... Well, actually I didn't, OSX did everything for me. Nothing confusing about setting it up at all. I've had more trouble getting USB mice to work under windos.
#2: So you don't like consistency? You know like "cut" doesn't make much sense on a file? "Cut this file" only makes sense to windos users. It makes sense for document parts, but not for files. "Move" is what you're looking for and that's what drag&drop does. This is actually a very fine example of Apple sticking to what makes sense instead of porting metaphers into contexts where they lose meaning.
#1: And this is your #1 problem? Err... yeah. Right. Seriously, if this is the worst thing that's wrong with OSX, then thanks for the compliment and for agreeing that OSX is about 25 years ahead of windos.
And the user comments don't get any better. #1 was already answered by the editors. #2: Hey dude, if you manually rename long lists of files more than once in your life, then you've got a non-computer issue. This is where you use scripting, you know? Or a nice commandline. Ok, mmv isn't default installed on OSX, but it's easy to emulate. And #3: Thank you. I also think windos sucks because it only supports 2 mouse buttons and I've always used at least 3, more often 5 on all the Unix systems. Then again, depending on your target population, it might well be a feature. I know from personal experience that your mum will have trouble with two mouse buttons. The Mighty Mouse is the only solution for everyone - for my mum it has one button and that's all she needs. For me, it has 4 buttons and a 2D scrollball.
Why haven't companies made it a priority to have 'instant on' desktops and laptops?
They have. It's called the Mac.
Seriously, I had heard it before, but it was still astonishing to watch when I got my MacBook Pro this year. I was used to long boot times in both windos and Linux. I was used to long times going from hibernate and even sleep to activity.
OSX boots in less time than XP on the same hardware takes to awaken from hibernate. When it's sent to sleep, OSX is back before I've opened the lid completely. It's not quite instantaneous, but it's as close as I need.
OSX still needs to do a bunch of things at boot, and after login, and there is certainly the possibility for caching (as you suggested) or other speedups. I'm sure they will happen, because as I see it, Apple is currently the only company that actually cares about this stuff.
I get a large majority of my news from Stewart, The Onion, and Colbert. Mostly because it's better written and better delivered than the other news sources. If "real" news could write as clearly, intelligently, and insightfully as these sources I might pay attention to it.
Mod parent up.:-)
I get almost all my news from (german site) Schandmännchen - a german satire news site that is very well written and brings you the ugly truth. When everyone knows that our politicians are just trying to pretend they are important and can do things, Schandmännchen writes it. One of their favoured comment about politicians is "quick, make something illegal!".
I find myself as well if not better informed about what's going on than my friends. Funny. Or, as the site once wrote "some days we wonder why we're doing satire at all" (reality is stranger sometimes)
You confuse copyright with ownership. Not a surprise that muddling these terms is exactly what the "intellectual property" mafia has been doing for yours.
The painting is yours as property and will belong to you forever, your heirs will inherit it, etc.
The copyright enters the public domain, i.e. after n years someone else can take a photo of your painting and publish it in a book without paying you for doing so. Someone else can sing your song without paying you for it.
The ethical rule fails here because copyright is not a limit on what people can do with your property, but what they can make with their own hands and work.
Yes, they work like porn - you can't define it, but you know it when you see it. There's a small grey area. But the standard should be "a considerable advantage in the field". 99% of current patents would fail that qualifications without anyone even having to take a 2nd look.
Once upon a time, patents were awarded for breakthrough inventions. You know, the stuff that really changed the way the game was played. The original patent system was designed for a small number of those, maybe a couple a year. On that scale, prior art and researching claims by comparing them other other patents works, and at that small number you can expect experts in a field to know the few relevant patents that exist.
But that's been perverted long since, and today you can get a patent for things as ground moving, earth shaking and future creating as the placement of a button on an input device. I'll let the other posters discuss obviousness, I'll just stand here in the corner and shake my head that such trivial nonsense is supported by an artificial exclusive monopoly system. It certainly took years of research to come up with this revolutionary idea, and thousands upon thousands of tries to get the details right, so a patent is surely adequate.
My suggestion for patent system reform: If it obviously took longer to write the patent application than to invent the thing in question, reject and have the applicant pay a fine for the wasted time of the patent office.
So which file format is this they're talking about? That from MS Office 95, 97, 2k, 2003? And which version, the documented one or the actual one?
Fact is that even though MS tries to cover it up by keeping the names constant, the office file formats are just as fragmented as the various versions of windos. It's a neat trick, but "Windows 3.1" and "Windows XP" really don't have much in common except that the later contains a backwards compatability layer, i.e. "Wine from Redmond".
Same with the file formats. Yes, newer versions of MS Office contain importers for the older file formats. That just hides the fact that there are probably 10 different versions out there.
So the Wii shipped 10% units less than the 360 - in less than half the time. If you look at November, you have to take into account that the Wii launched on Nov. 19th. The PS3 launched 2 days earlier.
So, if you would do some honest statistics, and compare only days where all systems were actually available, those numbers would look just slightly different, probably with the 360 coming in third instead of first...
Problem with the small places is that they get only a small number. One local store here had all of 3 units. The store across the street from where I queued had taken pre-orders - and their initial shipment didn't suffice to cover _those_, word was that half of the _next_ shipment would also still go to cover the pre-orders.
Not only the UK, all of Europe had the launch today.
I was at the local Saturn (large electronics chain in Germany) at about 8:50 - they open at 9:30. This specific shop is the largest electronics shop in Germany (or Europe? I forgot - anyway, it's huge). So I was confident that they would get enough units.
So were many others. At 8:50 I was about 100th in line. At about 9:15 the line had grown to maybe twice that. Someone near to me had a friend who knew one of the employees and had just called him on his cell phone, he said they had about 200 units, so at that point I was fairly confident I'd get one. Lots of pedestrians asked us in the line what this was about, if there was anything for free.:-)
Shortly after, employees from the shop moved along the line and told the crowd that the entire console section had been chained off, and to remain calm and organised and - what I especially welcomed - that anyone pushing or making trouble would be expelled immediately.
At 9:30 exactly they opened the door, the line moved in. Some pushing and running, but mostly a very well-behaved crowd - most live music gigs don't go as smoothly. Another half hour wait because they only let us into the chained off console section one-by-one. Was ok, we had some fun in the line cracking jokes, etc.
I got mine, back at the checkout I see a large crowd with sad faces leaving the store, figure that was when they had sold out. But no trouble, no aggressiveness.
Interesting fact: More women in the line then I had expected. Quite a few older people, though probably a good part of them were buying for their kids. Very friendly staff, friendly non-hostile people in the crowd.
This was the first game console I've ever bought, and the first time ever that I've waited in line for some consumer gimmick at launch day. But it was a thrilling experience.
Downside: At least in my store they didn't have the extra remotes, the only way to get one was to buy the Wiimote+Wii-Play bundle. And they didn't have Rampage! Damn.
Now I'm here at work, and have to wait another 4-5 hours before I can get home. Damn.:-)
Ah yes, but those would be thermal burns. Whereas sunburns technically are classified as a radiation burn.
Good point, yes. Doesn't destroy my argument because we got sidetracked there anyways. Point is that too much of a "harmless" thing can have non-harmless effects.
Oh, agreed here. I'm more than a bit iffy on the ethics of this gadget myself, I just dislike the amount of misinformation associated with the word "radiation".
Ok, we're in agreement there. Just that I'll meet you in the middle from the other side, because I dislike the "someone important said it's harmless, so it must be" crowd.:-)
Without the moral blabla, yes - burnout as I've seen it in both myself and others is the feeling that you're wasting your time and that you as a being are being wasted. ROI is one factor - if what you do doesn't seem to matter, your chances for burnout increase. Most people, however, will simply lower the investment. I know quite a lot of good people who could probably work twice as effective and twice as hard, if only they hadn't stopped caring a year or two ago. Some of them because management has saved on 5-10% of salary raises and another 5-10% of overhead costs for a training or some perks. So congratulations, dimwits, you've just saved the company 15% of expanses at the price of a 50% loss of productivity.
And they call it "burnout" to make it seem there's something wrong with the employee.
Not sunburns, but burns, yes. A strong enough light source is quite capable of igniting paper, for example. There's a video on YouTube and a description on the Web.
But treating this like it's some sort of scary voodoo radiation isn't rational.
Don't know who was talking about voodoo, certainly wasn't me. The human body is designed for certain limits of heat and light. Going considerably above that is not healthy. Maybe it's just blisters, but as other comments pointed out: Many, many chemicals, radiations, etc. were considered harmless until long-term studies proved otherwise.
And one of the most compelling features of the GPLv2 is that you didn't have to be a lawyer to understand it, and it left very little "wriggle room" for dispute.
Your view. To a lawyer (and I really do work with them daily), that is a challenge, not an obstacle. He will find something to wriggle. And if he can't, he will invent some external force that creates the wiggle room. See Novel-MS deal.
if you are unable (for any reason) to pass on the GPL rights to your customers then you can not distribute at all.
See above. The lawyers found this bulletproof, so they found a new way. They added patents as icing on the cake. Now since Novell signed a licensing deal, 7 of the GPL will never be a problem for them. I've not studied the topic in depth, but if PJ has, I trust her judgement.
Until today, I wasn't sure about GPL v2 vs. v3 - now I am. v3 is definitely the way to go. Sorry, Linus, but you're wrong. You are a software engineer, not a lawyer.
IANAL, but I play with enough of them in my day job to spot it when they've smelled blood. And right now, GPL v2 lies bleeding in the water with the sharks circling it.
Slashdot Mirror
The whole quote is a longwinded marketing-droid newspeak for "we don't yet know how to force ourselves on these people who don't want to see our stuff".
I sincerely hope the piracy scene will rise to the challenge. A few years from now, you will have two jobs: Removing the copy protection and removing the ads.
By now I have quite a few hours of playtime down, most of it with friends. Not once has a Wiimote left the hands of its player, even though some of us have played with enthusiasm. If you look at the videos on YouTube, you'll see that in those where the straps broke, there are always two things:
a) The player's hands were sweaty, and I don't mean a little bit
b) The Wiimote was literally thrown into a wall at full speed, as in "everything you've got".
Yeah, you can get into the game, but if you stand in your living room throwing something at the TV with the maximum amount of power you can muster, then anyone with more than 3 brain cells should realize he's doing something potentially dangerous.
Plus there is no advantage I've noticed to putting that much power into your movements. In all the games I've played so far, timing is more important than raw power.
Can one explicitly exclude oneself from a class-action lawsuit?
I mean, these guys are bringing a suit "on behalf of the owners of a Wii". I won a Wii and I very much want to make it very clear that they are not acting on my behalf, nor with my consent, and quite the contrary.
Can I write to the court? Is there any way to say "whoever they say they're working for, I'm in that list but they're not my friends" ?
I believe windos is a piece of crap, and I believe so because I've experienced most of its failures and shortcomings firsthand. My private mailserver has a higher availability and longer uptimes than the corporate exchange cluster in every company I've seen so far. And no, you can't tell me it's got less volume, it's been running a dozen or so mailing lists for several years. Windows clearly has a more robust permission scheme with its ACL's and user rights policies, Which I have not ever seen used properly, anywhere. A friend of mine and one of the few windos admins who can compete with the average Unix admin in skill and know-how has a few things to say about Active Directory. Very impressive things. But one of them is that very few people really understand it and almost nobody uses it. Windows group policies is something with no real equivelent in UNIX either. I happen to know SELinux a little. Well, ok, I've held presentations at international conferences. SELinux smokes everything windos has to offer, permission and policy-wise. You're right, it's not an equivalent...
So MS is once again leveraging it's monopoly on the desktop to gain market share where they can't dominate without (game consoles). Wasn't there an antitrust case or something?
From a robust permission scheme, remote control of group policies and really easy deployment there's nothing like Windows.
Except any of the many Unix versions.
One of the first companies I worked for had a network of mostly Windos with some Solaris machines for the developers. Me and another guy managed the Solaris machines in addition to our regular jobs, and it was painless, smooth and easy. The windos dudes spent most of their days cussing at the inabilities of their OS.
For external drives, there is plenty of software around. iBackup is what I have installed and it does what you want.
.Mac
What I'm looking for and haven't found yet is something that'll do backups over the network, and is not
#15: True, but how often do you really need today's date? For me, that's once every few days and it really isn't much of a problem to move to top-right and click on the time.
#14: Stay away from the f&%$ing desktop! It's enough that my real-world desktop is messy. The #1 windos insanity is the cluttered desktop every other user has. I've seen more than enough windos desktops that were literally filled with icons. And the worst thing to put on a desktop is interactive elements ("widgets"). Why? Because they'll always be covered by some window. In the best case, I have to shuffle my windows around to access it.
Nope, no way. Dashboard is pretty good, because I can still see the desktop (with all windows), so I can read the IP, number or other data I want to enter into a widget. And it's only there when I need it, not running in the background all the time.
#13: Ok, what are they talking about? My Finder has context menus.
#12: Someone didn't get either the Dock nor Expose. Dude, what you want is Expose and it does a great job at giving you an overview of all the open documents you've got - either in total or per application, whatever you prefer. The Dock's job is a different one and I'd rather have it do one job well than twenty jobs shabby.
#10: Please go into a corner and die quietly. Leave the Dock uncluttered, you fools! Trying to shove everyone of the 500 small tools you have installed into one menu is exactly why the windos "Start" menu is the craphola it is. In case you've been living under a rock for the past few years: You can use Spotlight to very quickly find and launch your non-common apps, or install Quicksilver, which does an even better job and is by far the best way to start apps invented, ever (Linux users: Katapult on KDE stole the idea, though it's not as feature-complete).
#8: Err. Are we talking about the same OSX here? Ok, I only setup one printer... Well, actually I didn't, OSX did everything for me. Nothing confusing about setting it up at all. I've had more trouble getting USB mice to work under windos.
#2: So you don't like consistency? You know like "cut" doesn't make much sense on a file? "Cut this file" only makes sense to windos users. It makes sense for document parts, but not for files. "Move" is what you're looking for and that's what drag&drop does. This is actually a very fine example of Apple sticking to what makes sense instead of porting metaphers into contexts where they lose meaning.
#1: And this is your #1 problem? Err... yeah. Right. Seriously, if this is the worst thing that's wrong with OSX, then thanks for the compliment and for agreeing that OSX is about 25 years ahead of windos.
And the user comments don't get any better. #1 was already answered by the editors. #2: Hey dude, if you manually rename long lists of files more than once in your life, then you've got a non-computer issue. This is where you use scripting, you know? Or a nice commandline. Ok, mmv isn't default installed on OSX, but it's easy to emulate. And #3: Thank you. I also think windos sucks because it only supports 2 mouse buttons and I've always used at least 3, more often 5 on all the Unix systems. Then again, depending on your target population, it might well be a feature. I know from personal experience that your mum will have trouble with two mouse buttons. The Mighty Mouse is the only solution for everyone - for my mum it has one button and that's all she needs. For me, it has 4 buttons and a 2D scrollball.
Why haven't companies made it a priority to have 'instant on' desktops and laptops?
They have. It's called the Mac.
Seriously, I had heard it before, but it was still astonishing to watch when I got my MacBook Pro this year. I was used to long boot times in both windos and Linux. I was used to long times going from hibernate and even sleep to activity.
OSX boots in less time than XP on the same hardware takes to awaken from hibernate. When it's sent to sleep, OSX is back before I've opened the lid completely. It's not quite instantaneous, but it's as close as I need.
OSX still needs to do a bunch of things at boot, and after login, and there is certainly the possibility for caching (as you suggested) or other speedups. I'm sure they will happen, because as I see it, Apple is currently the only company that actually cares about this stuff.
I get a large majority of my news from Stewart, The Onion, and Colbert. Mostly because it's better written and better delivered than the other news sources. If "real" news could write as clearly, intelligently, and insightfully as these sources I might pay attention to it.
:-)
Mod parent up.
I get almost all my news from (german site) Schandmännchen - a german satire news site that is very well written and brings you the ugly truth. When everyone knows that our politicians are just trying to pretend they are important and can do things, Schandmännchen writes it. One of their favoured comment about politicians is "quick, make something illegal!".
I find myself as well if not better informed about what's going on than my friends. Funny. Or, as the site once wrote "some days we wonder why we're doing satire at all" (reality is stranger sometimes)
You confuse copyright with ownership. Not a surprise that muddling these terms is exactly what the "intellectual property" mafia has been doing for yours.
The painting is yours as property and will belong to you forever, your heirs will inherit it, etc.
The copyright enters the public domain, i.e. after n years someone else can take a photo of your painting and publish it in a book without paying you for doing so. Someone else can sing your song without paying you for it.
The ethical rule fails here because copyright is not a limit on what people can do with your property, but what they can make with their own hands and work.
Criteria like that are hard to quantify,
Yes, they work like porn - you can't define it, but you know it when you see it. There's a small grey area. But the standard should be "a considerable advantage in the field". 99% of current patents would fail that qualifications without anyone even having to take a 2nd look.
Once upon a time, patents were awarded for breakthrough inventions. You know, the stuff that really changed the way the game was played. The original patent system was designed for a small number of those, maybe a couple a year. On that scale, prior art and researching claims by comparing them other other patents works, and at that small number you can expect experts in a field to know the few relevant patents that exist.
But that's been perverted long since, and today you can get a patent for things as ground moving, earth shaking and future creating as the placement of a button on an input device. I'll let the other posters discuss obviousness, I'll just stand here in the corner and shake my head that such trivial nonsense is supported by an artificial exclusive monopoly system. It certainly took years of research to come up with this revolutionary idea, and thousands upon thousands of tries to get the details right, so a patent is surely adequate.
My suggestion for patent system reform: If it obviously took longer to write the patent application than to invent the thing in question, reject and have the applicant pay a fine for the wasted time of the patent office.
So which file format is this they're talking about? That from MS Office 95, 97, 2k, 2003? And which version, the documented one or the actual one?
Fact is that even though MS tries to cover it up by keeping the names constant, the office file formats are just as fragmented as the various versions of windos. It's a neat trick, but "Windows 3.1" and "Windows XP" really don't have much in common except that the later contains a backwards compatability layer, i.e. "Wine from Redmond".
Same with the file formats. Yes, newer versions of MS Office contain importers for the older file formats. That just hides the fact that there are probably 10 different versions out there.
So the Wii shipped 10% units less than the 360 - in less than half the time. If you look at November, you have to take into account that the Wii launched on Nov. 19th. The PS3 launched 2 days earlier.
So, if you would do some honest statistics, and compare only days where all systems were actually available, those numbers would look just slightly different, probably with the 360 coming in third instead of first...
Problem with the small places is that they get only a small number. One local store here had all of 3 units. The store across the street from where I queued had taken pre-orders - and their initial shipment didn't suffice to cover _those_, word was that half of the _next_ shipment would also still go to cover the pre-orders.
Not only the UK, all of Europe had the launch today.
:-)
:-)
I was at the local Saturn (large electronics chain in Germany) at about 8:50 - they open at 9:30. This specific shop is the largest electronics shop in Germany (or Europe? I forgot - anyway, it's huge). So I was confident that they would get enough units.
So were many others. At 8:50 I was about 100th in line. At about 9:15 the line had grown to maybe twice that. Someone near to me had a friend who knew one of the employees and had just called him on his cell phone, he said they had about 200 units, so at that point I was fairly confident I'd get one.
Lots of pedestrians asked us in the line what this was about, if there was anything for free.
Shortly after, employees from the shop moved along the line and told the crowd that the entire console section had been chained off, and to remain calm and organised and - what I especially welcomed - that anyone pushing or making trouble would be expelled immediately.
At 9:30 exactly they opened the door, the line moved in. Some pushing and running, but mostly a very well-behaved crowd - most live music gigs don't go as smoothly. Another half hour wait because they only let us into the chained off console section one-by-one. Was ok, we had some fun in the line cracking jokes, etc.
I got mine, back at the checkout I see a large crowd with sad faces leaving the store, figure that was when they had sold out. But no trouble, no aggressiveness.
Interesting fact: More women in the line then I had expected. Quite a few older people, though probably a good part of them were buying for their kids. Very friendly staff, friendly non-hostile people in the crowd.
This was the first game console I've ever bought, and the first time ever that I've waited in line for some consumer gimmick at launch day. But it was a thrilling experience.
Downside: At least in my store they didn't have the extra remotes, the only way to get one was to buy the Wiimote+Wii-Play bundle. And they didn't have Rampage! Damn.
Now I'm here at work, and have to wait another 4-5 hours before I can get home. Damn.
Ah yes, but those would be thermal burns. Whereas sunburns technically are classified as a radiation burn.
:-)
Good point, yes. Doesn't destroy my argument because we got sidetracked there anyways. Point is that too much of a "harmless" thing can have non-harmless effects.
Oh, agreed here. I'm more than a bit iffy on the ethics of this gadget myself, I just dislike the amount of misinformation associated with the word "radiation".
Ok, we're in agreement there. Just that I'll meet you in the middle from the other side, because I dislike the "someone important said it's harmless, so it must be" crowd.
Without the moral blabla, yes - burnout as I've seen it in both myself and others is the feeling that you're wasting your time and that you as a being are being wasted. ROI is one factor - if what you do doesn't seem to matter, your chances for burnout increase. Most people, however, will simply lower the investment. I know quite a lot of good people who could probably work twice as effective and twice as hard, if only they hadn't stopped caring a year or two ago. Some of them because management has saved on 5-10% of salary raises and another 5-10% of overhead costs for a training or some perks. So congratulations, dimwits, you've just saved the company 15% of expanses at the price of a 50% loss of productivity.
And they call it "burnout" to make it seem there's something wrong with the employee.
So, you can get sunburns from light bulbs now?
Not sunburns, but burns, yes. A strong enough light source is quite capable of igniting paper, for example. There's a video on YouTube and a description on the Web.
But treating this like it's some sort of scary voodoo radiation isn't rational.
Don't know who was talking about voodoo, certainly wasn't me. The human body is designed for certain limits of heat and light. Going considerably above that is not healthy. Maybe it's just blisters, but as other comments pointed out: Many, many chemicals, radiations, etc. were considered harmless until long-term studies proved otherwise.
And one of the most compelling features of the GPLv2 is that you didn't have to be a lawyer to understand it, and it left very little "wriggle room" for dispute.
Your view. To a lawyer (and I really do work with them daily), that is a challenge, not an obstacle. He will find something to wriggle. And if he can't, he will invent some external force that creates the wiggle room. See Novel-MS deal.
if you are unable (for any reason) to pass on the GPL rights to your customers then you can not distribute at all.
See above. The lawyers found this bulletproof, so they found a new way. They added patents as icing on the cake. Now since Novell signed a licensing deal, 7 of the GPL will never be a problem for them. I've not studied the topic in depth, but if PJ has, I trust her judgement.
Until today, I wasn't sure about GPL v2 vs. v3 - now I am. v3 is definitely the way to go. Sorry, Linus, but you're wrong. You are a software engineer, not a lawyer.
IANAL, but I play with enough of them in my day job to spot it when they've smelled blood. And right now, GPL v2 lies bleeding in the water with the sharks circling it.