1: Lack of proper package management (want to uninstall that package?).
removepkg isn't for uninstalling packages? Man, I've been using it for the wrong thing all these years. Good thing I can still use pkgtool and choose "remove" on the menu there.
Want those dependencies resolved?
What dependencies are those? I suppose every once in awhile it happens, but the instructions for installing those packages tell you what else to install and in what order.
Want those packages automaticly updated to get the latest security patches? Tough shit. This is a "hands-on OS" and damned if you'll get any assistance getting work done efficiently.
Funny, I've been on a mailing list for years that informs me of all the security and enhancement package updates for slackware. I can then just ftp to ftp.slackware.com or my favorite mirror, download them, and install with upgradepkg or pkgtool. Alternately, I can install slapt-get (which admittedly is not a default part of slackware) and do a quick slapt-get --upgrade.
I might be biased, but I have used Slackware, and my bias is mostly made up of that experience and my encounter with other Slackware users.
You might have installed Slackware, but you clearly didn't use it.
I'm definitely going to check this greencine out. I'm on the east coast and not sure I have the patience for the shipping time and tend to watch most of the big budget hollywood movies plus every terrible B horror and sci-fi flick I can get my hands on, so their stock may or may not work for me, but I'll definitely check them out.
Yeah, that only works for discs within one season and most other things that come as a boxed set. For seperate seasons, which are sepearate sets, it doesn't work. I've worked on a large scale content management and distribution platform and unless they did something really stupid it should be relatively trivial for them to make it work that way, though. They should be able to just link disc 1 of season to to disc 6 of season 1 the same way disc 6 of seaon one is linked to disc 5, if nothing else. Maybe add a flag in the properties to show that while linked, they are seperate seasons, that way adding season 1 doesn't add ALL seasons and removing some disc from season 4 doesn't force you to remove or break the set for the rest of the seasons.
The blockbuster rep's solution was "Don't add season 2 to the queue until season 1 is fully watched". Kind of defeats the purpose of having a queue, eh?
Even within a season when queued together like that, it can still do some stupid stuff. Blockbuster never did this to me, but Netflix has. Send disc one of, say, Alias season 3 which is #1 in the queue with discs 2-6 next, all queued together as one thing. Even though the rest of the discs in the series say available, I then get all of 24 season 4 which were like numbers 18-24 or whatever in my queue. What the hell logic is going on there? It isn't nearly as bad as sending different seasons of the same show out of order as has also happened to me, but is still somewhat of an annoyance, especially when the website says the discs they aren't sendig me are available. Crap like this is caused by the second thing I mentioned, they use their overall company wide stock to show if something is available or not on the website but their local warehouse stock to determine what they actually send you. While fixing that wouldn't actually change the order things get sent, it still doesn't make any sense for it to be inaccurate, it should be a fairly simple change to use the local warehouse to show if a movie is available for you or not.
I wish they'd fix the problems in the logic determining what they actually send me from my queue before fixing problems with what they recommend to me. If I've got season 1 of a show in my queue prior to season 2, don't start sending me season 2 because some disc of season 1 is unavailable (which has happened to me multiple with both netflix and blockbuster online), send me something else completely. They've got the tech to keep one season of a tv show in order, it can't possibly be that difficult to extend that to keeping multiple seasons of a show in order.
On top of that, don't show me that it's available in my queue but send me something else instead. While I haven't asked netflix about this, I have asked blockbuster online, and I imagine they are both doing the same thing. The disc is "available" just not at the warehouse used to ship to me personally. Instead of basing one piece of information off of total stock and one off of local stock, base them both on the stock at the warehouse shipping to me.
You (and a couple others) apparently completely missed the point of the post you're replying to. If nothing else, these lines should have clued you in.
This just shows your complete lack of understanding of the fundamental point of this case and others like it.
There's no way the parents could afford to pay out on a $600m lawsuit, even if they weren't already dead.
I'll put it less subtly for you. The point of lawsuits like this isn't to punish whoever did something wrong, it's to punish whoever has the most cash and can in some way loosely be tied to the case.
Nope, you're not the only one wondering that. I've been wondering that ever since home users started being able to easily get bandwidth comparable to a t-1 (in theory) for $50/month or less. The problem is I haven't devised a plan to take it away from everyone else in the world without losing it myself yet.
I use webmin/usermin (BSD licence) instead of Cpanel (proprietary).
Cpanel is so common because it's provided by the hosting places on a lot of dedicated servers and used for almost all web hosting packages that I have seen. While the choice of licensing may seem silly, this is businesses using it, they aren't going with it for any idealistic reasons. They are choosing it because it is more user friendly for the non-technical types who still insist on having a website and running phpbb. It's been quite awhile since I've used webmin or usermin, but last I used them they didn't have anything that compared to the ease of use for managing mail accounts, databases, and installing software for the non-techs that Cpanel did at the time.
How many people in the US actually drive a car that needs anything over 87 octane? Most cars don't need it. Arguably no cars need it. I can't remember the exact source or find it, but maybe a year or two ago I read an article written by one of the lead Porsche engineers saying that even most of their high end cars don't require high octane to run properly and while thre is better performance with it in cars designed to use it, the gain is minimal and most people are not going to notice it in daily driving on the road.
The FTC agrees
Then there's also the argument that I've heard multiple places that higher octane gas is more harmful to the environment. I have seen two reasons given for this. One is that is takes more crude oil to make the higher octane fuel. The other is that the additives used in the fuel to raise the octane end up creating more fumes and particles in your exhaust. The latter I suspect is true. I used to drive a v6 Taurus SHO and was a regular on a few SHO forums. A number of people had started using 87 and 89 octane rather than the recommended premium fuel because there is a valve that gets fouled up with exhaust particles and seriously hurts performance and can keep the car from starting (this is also due to poor engine design). When using the lower octane fuels drivers did not have this valve get clogged up nearly as often if ever.
As to 93 octane vs 91, why do you need it? My current car "requires" premium fuel. I live on the east coast and can get 93, but if I lived in the midwest, where I did for most of my life I could only get 91 (as you mentioned) yet my car would still have all the same parts. It seems pretty clear to me that 2 extra octane isn't going to make any sort of noticeable difference.
How does RFID stop you from using out-of-region disks?
And more importantly to me, why do they want to? I don't understand the point of region encoding to start with. Why does anyone care if I want to watch the French version of a movie? Is there something I'm missing about the dvd market where my ordering one online from a different country negatively affects the bottom line of the distributors/producers/whoever somehow?
Exactly my point. You see, there is more than one song. There's even more than one type of song. Heck, I can even. . . invent my own!
An unscripted RTS can be varied in thousands of different ways to give a different experience every time, just as a flute can be played differently.
I would have to argue that this applies to games, too. There is more than one game. There's even more than one type of game. Heck, I can even invent my own!
Even in scripted games, there's almost always more to do. Beat the game faster, get a higher score, die fewer times, etc. Many of them have goals built into them where you have to find hidden things or do certain things in a specified timeframe and you almost certainly won't get them all on the first playthrough of the game.
Perhaps you just happen to prefer the type of games that lend themselves to being open ended anyway, that's cool. Your reply gives me the impression that you dislike non open ended games due to a skewed view of them, though. I'm assuming you also read books and watch movies and they suffer from the complaints you have about games far more than the games usually do... hell, if you go to the theater it's even starting to cost damned near as much as a game or even more if you buy older or used games, which throws out the money argument.
Personally, I prefer a game that ends eventually. It gives me a point where I can say "that was a cool story" or "that game was pretty fun, I bet I can beat it again faster and get super weapon x" or even just "alright, it's done. Now I can move onto a new game and see what story and/or challenges await me there" without feeling like I've still got stuff to do in the current game.
Not to mention the fact that EA is gathering information that you provide.
Not quite. EA is gathering information that you provide TO MICROSOFT, not to EA. Sure, you could argue that one should have read the privacy policie and all other documentation, but you know what? Who's going to go to EA's website and read that before buying a game, if at all? No, it's not the company's duty to make sure you read all the documentation, but I do believe they make that stuff longer and more difficult to read, both in terms of wording and tiny fonts that some people may have trouble with, than it needs to be to try to dissuade people from reading it which is wrong imo. My first line might make you think I'm only blaming EA in this, but just to be clear, I believe both companies are in the wrong.
C'mon, get a grip. Despite the fact that this is a dupe, it still angers me that the 'major' pc protection companies can't deal with windows actually securing itself. They would actually consider using blackhat techniques instead of the provided methods? They'd be fools, too. Any blackhat technique they use would be immediately patched by Microsoft. Doesn't take a genius to see that.
Part of the commplaint, though, is not just that they cannot provide proper security software for it but that MS' solution isn't actually providing any security. What they are saying is that this "security" feature makes it pretty much impossible to properly/legitimately do their job, but doesn't actually stop a good many of the techniques that hackers use.
Whether MS' technique works or not, it's bad for us as it limits our choices.
Of course I'm sure neither of these is a concern to symantec, only that they'll make less money, but they are still valid arugments to consider.
Ok so in the United States, porn is basically not legal to buy by a minor. The store can't sell it to you, and you can't rent it.
And hell, NC-17 movies exist, as do R movies (which require a parent).
So why do games not have similar levels of preventative measures?
I guess the question I have is... why should games NOT have such similar measures (I'm in favor of NO limitations to who can buy actually) while porn and movies do? And if you believe that games should be freely buyable, would you consider allowing porn and any rated movie to also be freely buyable? What about cigerettes and alcohol?
It seems that we keep on having specific rules/laws per each individual "substance", and many are inconsistent with each other in terms of necessity.
A pornographic game, I do believe, still falls under the same legislation as any other porn. I could be wrong on that, though as I haven't checked.
As to R (and I believe NC-17) movies? Those aren't restricted by law. A movie theater is legally allowed to let you into any movie they want, same goes for wal-mart selling them to you. They check ID's because they have chosen to at both movie theaters and stores. I imagine a movie theater might get into trouble with the MPAA if they were found to be letting underaged kids into R (without an adult) and NC-17 movies, but they won't with the law.
The only difference between this and video games is that movies have an industry regulated outlet, the theaters, whereas games don't. Once you go to retail stores, games and movies are sold/not sold to minors pretty evenly in my experience.
We've become so conditioned to the idea that the government is corrupt, we fail to notice when they are actually doing their job.
It's not so much that people have failed to notice the government doing their job for once, several people have shown appreciation of it. It's that the government has been doing corrupt things and not protecting us for so long that people question whether they're really trying to protect us this time. It's kind of like that scene in a lot of movie revolving around highschool, where the popular kids constantly pick on and beat up the dorky kids. Then one day they invite said dork to a party, the dork thinks "wow, they've changed their minds and like me", only to show up and get their ass kicked and/or be the butt of some school wide joke.
If that's what they meant, that's an ass backwards, unclear as hell way to state it. While not necessarily technically correct, most people refer to the IP suite as TCP/IP, and so would include apps that are using UDP as using TCP/IP. Looks like they sort of clear it up a few lines down, but I stopped reading after that first line.
I "think" the point of the USB is so that you can use the nic as a seperate computer. It's kind of a neat idea if it didn't cost so much. My first thought was using it as some sort of poor man's blade server... get 3 or 4 and stick em in your pci slots. But not at $280 each, I could just buy a single computer that would outperform all of them combined for less. For a much more reasonable price it has some potential and niche uses. Of course, I don't trust these guys one bit. Their comments, such as (paraphrased) "most games today don't use tcp/ip" show that they don't know shit and are horrible liars. I'm sure there was more, but I stopped reading after that.
Many network products today claim to 'offload' network calculations (like checksum, tcp segmentation, etc.). Those technologies are usually only for TCP/IP networking (which most games that Hardcore Gamers play don't use).
What? This may be a neat idea, although has some obvious issues as others have pointed out, but I can't trust a word these guys say after reading that.
Thinking games? We've got tons of strategy games, puzzle games, and adventure games. On top of that many other genres include puzzles, sometimes difficult ones.
Movie quality storylines and settings and acting? A good number of RPGs and adventure games would fall into this, with huge, thought out histories and well developed personalities. Just have a look at The Elder Scrolls or Xenosaga. Again, most other genres also have games that would fit these requirements with excellent acting, interesting stories, and fully developed societies and histories.
Perhaps people like the writer of the article are the problem, not the lack of respectable games.
Many games are rated M for mature to begin with and nearly nobody follows that rule.
Well, I believe what they are targetting by saying that they need to require this are things with "undisclosed" content, such as "nudity" in Oblivion bumping it from a T to an M and the hot coffee stuff bumping GTA from an M to an AO. Of course, what these jackasses are failing to realize is that under normal gameplay as designed by the developers, which is what the ESRB would be viewing, these things never would have been seen and so still would not have been included in the ratings (as they should not be).
On the other hand, it is possible for this to work to our advantage. It allows the ESRB to say "Look, assholes, we played the entire game just like you asked us to. This content does not come up in the normal gameplay. Now shut the fuck up and go regulate something else you know nothing about."
Really, I think this is a multiple part problem and I believe most of the solution will come with time. Some of these have already been pointed out by others, but I'm going to re-iterate them anyway. Keep in mind, I am not saying these are facts, though they are more or less stated as such, these are just my feelings on what's going on.
1) It's hard to write about technology. If you write about it in a way those who understand the technology will appreciate, the majority of your audience won't get it. If you write it in a way that the majority of your audience can understand, it's too watered down to actually say anything important. As has been said, perhaps this is because they're writing about the technology itself rather than the effects of the technology on society.
2) I think problem 1 is made greater by the choices and general personalities of the types of writers. I'm going to stereotype a bit, I realize there are exceptions and varying degrees of all of this. The geek, the one who understands the technology to be able to write about it in any meaningful way, is frequently going to be more interested in writing a technical paper about it than writing something for the masses or just working with the technology rather than being a journalist. Your average journalist is not a geek and as has been said, doesn't necesarily understand the technology, many people here I think would argue that to be true even about most of the technology journalists.
3) Older management. The people in charge of the magzines, newspapers, etc. are in the older crowd, the ones who didn't grow up with and don't necessarily understand the technology and see it all as a bunch of toys that aren't really needed. They don't want an accurate, thoughtful, article about video games or ipods or the internet because they don't understand or don't care about it. So, rather than getting good writing about it, they demand writing that will bring in money from those who give us the technology (as we frequently see dicussed regarding video game reviews).
4) Tied to number 3 is that most of the magazines are part of "Corporate America". You write what earns the money by making your customers happy... not your subscribers, but the people who pay big money to advertise in your magazine or give you kickbacks for a good review. We all know what big corporations are about, and it's rarely gaining customers by producing a quality product.
5) There are "hard hitting" technology journalists out there. They are writing the higher quality blogs, web comics, etc. They are not well known because they are part of the geek culture, which is still, technically, an underground scene in a sense. They are likely to stay this way for a long time due to language that is generally considered not suitable for the mainstream and talking about things most of the world doesn't currently understand or care to understand.
I think most of this will work itself out over time. As people are growing up with computers, the Internet, and video games society as a whole will at least have a better understanding of it all, if not the understanding us geeks have. When that happens we'll see articles written to a higher level. We'll have people writing about the technology and running the magazines and newspapers that cover it that grew up with the technology and have an interest in it because it's what they grew up with rather than just because it's the next big thing to cash in on.
Seriously, in today's call center you are not allowed to hang up on customers. Never, no matter how much they abuse you, no matter how stupid they are. I've worked in 2 & know people in 3 others. The customer just calls back, yells for a supervisor & you get reamed for hanging up on them, even after recordings show they used every curse known to western civilization and a few new ones. I once got yelled at for hanging up on a customer who had just issued a death threat.
This is why I'll go to burger king before taking another phone support job... well, ok, I'll look into burger king anyway, I might change my mind after I try to pay the bills. I did phone support for about 4 years. I'm burnt out, bitter, and intolerant after that. I don't mind helping someone who has a real problem, but when you do the same wrong thing every day for 2 weeks and call me to have me fix it (No, I'm not exaggerating on my experiences), explain to you why it broke, and why you shouldn't do that, I've got no patience. Same for the people who call every time they get a pop-up instead of doing what the pop-up says (although admittedly, if they don't know what they're looking at, that can be dangerous, too, thanks to adware and various shady pop-up ads). Did something weird to your hardware, like flashed it with unofficial software, that's too damned bad. I'll help you flash it back to the default software if possible and then help. If that can't be done, well, I guess you shouldn't have done that.
For these same reasons, if my internet connection is acting up, I pull my linux boxes off the network and go to a default setup in the way the ISP tech support expects to see it. Windows XP behind the dsl modem, with the dsl modem software installed on the computer. Then if it's still having issues, I call them. I try to give people manning the phones the same level of being a good customer as I expected when I was on the phones.
As to working with other software, as others have been suggested, I think the best route to go is allow it but say "Hey, look, this has only been verified to work with this one software configuration. You can change it if you want, but it may or may not work, and there's no way we can provide support for it." That's completely fair to all parties and keeps the freedom of the free software, imo.
To me, this is a risk you take if you use used hardware. While certainly annoying for the end user, perhaps they should go ask their buddy what they did to the hardware before giving it to them. Also keep in mind that the company can always use a different OS or piece of software if they don't like the licensing, one that allows them to lock it down. I frequently think the free software zealots are going a little too far, but I'm not sure they are in this case. Making the software inaccessible is making it inaccessible, however good the reason for doing so might be. The people that have said to allow the changes, but have some sort of warning that makes it known that it is not in the default software configuration, are probably the ones on the correct and most reasonable track.
The thing is, when it comes to modifying embedded apps, firmware, etc. anyone who is doing such a thing should, in theory, be knowledgeable enough to understand why what they are doing cannot be supported. It's not Joe Smith, 45 year old plumber who uses a computer once a week at work to enter his timesheet, that is going to be changing the software. Plus, even if it is, anyone who has gotten suckered into phone support and actually has enough knowledge to understand this themselves will probably get fed up with it and have little trouble saying "Sorry, we don't support that. Thanks for calling." and hanging up if it becomes a problem.... or maybe I was just an asshole when I did phone support.
I'm a bit surprised by this as my spending at Amazon has only increased in the last 8 years. Amazon is my preferred supplier of books and games. I'd say more people are doing so.
Are you sure everything you buy on amazon.com actually comes from amazon, though? I know a lot of the stuff I buy actually comes from other retailers that amazon hosts. I don't know if amazon recieves any percentage of the sales price from that or if they just get a flat fee, but in either case, it may not really be helping them much.
Slashdot Mirror
removepkg isn't for uninstalling packages? Man, I've been using it for the wrong thing all these years. Good thing I can still use pkgtool and choose "remove" on the menu there.
What dependencies are those? I suppose every once in awhile it happens, but the instructions for installing those packages tell you what else to install and in what order.
Funny, I've been on a mailing list for years that informs me of all the security and enhancement package updates for slackware. I can then just ftp to ftp.slackware.com or my favorite mirror, download them, and install with upgradepkg or pkgtool. Alternately, I can install slapt-get (which admittedly is not a default part of slackware) and do a quick slapt-get --upgrade.
You might have installed Slackware, but you clearly didn't use it.
I'm definitely going to check this greencine out. I'm on the east coast and not sure I have the patience for the shipping time and tend to watch most of the big budget hollywood movies plus every terrible B horror and sci-fi flick I can get my hands on, so their stock may or may not work for me, but I'll definitely check them out.
Yeah, that only works for discs within one season and most other things that come as a boxed set. For seperate seasons, which are sepearate sets, it doesn't work. I've worked on a large scale content management and distribution platform and unless they did something really stupid it should be relatively trivial for them to make it work that way, though. They should be able to just link disc 1 of season to to disc 6 of season 1 the same way disc 6 of seaon one is linked to disc 5, if nothing else. Maybe add a flag in the properties to show that while linked, they are seperate seasons, that way adding season 1 doesn't add ALL seasons and removing some disc from season 4 doesn't force you to remove or break the set for the rest of the seasons.
The blockbuster rep's solution was "Don't add season 2 to the queue until season 1 is fully watched". Kind of defeats the purpose of having a queue, eh?
Even within a season when queued together like that, it can still do some stupid stuff. Blockbuster never did this to me, but Netflix has. Send disc one of, say, Alias season 3 which is #1 in the queue with discs 2-6 next, all queued together as one thing. Even though the rest of the discs in the series say available, I then get all of 24 season 4 which were like numbers 18-24 or whatever in my queue. What the hell logic is going on there? It isn't nearly as bad as sending different seasons of the same show out of order as has also happened to me, but is still somewhat of an annoyance, especially when the website says the discs they aren't sendig me are available. Crap like this is caused by the second thing I mentioned, they use their overall company wide stock to show if something is available or not on the website but their local warehouse stock to determine what they actually send you. While fixing that wouldn't actually change the order things get sent, it still doesn't make any sense for it to be inaccurate, it should be a fairly simple change to use the local warehouse to show if a movie is available for you or not.
I wish they'd fix the problems in the logic determining what they actually send me from my queue before fixing problems with what they recommend to me. If I've got season 1 of a show in my queue prior to season 2, don't start sending me season 2 because some disc of season 1 is unavailable (which has happened to me multiple with both netflix and blockbuster online), send me something else completely. They've got the tech to keep one season of a tv show in order, it can't possibly be that difficult to extend that to keeping multiple seasons of a show in order.
On top of that, don't show me that it's available in my queue but send me something else instead. While I haven't asked netflix about this, I have asked blockbuster online, and I imagine they are both doing the same thing. The disc is "available" just not at the warehouse used to ship to me personally. Instead of basing one piece of information off of total stock and one off of local stock, base them both on the stock at the warehouse shipping to me.
I'll put it less subtly for you. The point of lawsuits like this isn't to punish whoever did something wrong, it's to punish whoever has the most cash and can in some way loosely be tied to the case.
Nope, you're not the only one wondering that. I've been wondering that ever since home users started being able to easily get bandwidth comparable to a t-1 (in theory) for $50/month or less. The problem is I haven't devised a plan to take it away from everyone else in the world without losing it myself yet.
Hell, sorry about the formatting (or lack thereof).
How many people in the US actually drive a car that needs anything over 87 octane? Most cars don't need it. Arguably no cars need it. I can't remember the exact source or find it, but maybe a year or two ago I read an article written by one of the lead Porsche engineers saying that even most of their high end cars don't require high octane to run properly and while thre is better performance with it in cars designed to use it, the gain is minimal and most people are not going to notice it in daily driving on the road. The FTC agrees Then there's also the argument that I've heard multiple places that higher octane gas is more harmful to the environment. I have seen two reasons given for this. One is that is takes more crude oil to make the higher octane fuel. The other is that the additives used in the fuel to raise the octane end up creating more fumes and particles in your exhaust. The latter I suspect is true. I used to drive a v6 Taurus SHO and was a regular on a few SHO forums. A number of people had started using 87 and 89 octane rather than the recommended premium fuel because there is a valve that gets fouled up with exhaust particles and seriously hurts performance and can keep the car from starting (this is also due to poor engine design). When using the lower octane fuels drivers did not have this valve get clogged up nearly as often if ever. As to 93 octane vs 91, why do you need it? My current car "requires" premium fuel. I live on the east coast and can get 93, but if I lived in the midwest, where I did for most of my life I could only get 91 (as you mentioned) yet my car would still have all the same parts. It seems pretty clear to me that 2 extra octane isn't going to make any sort of noticeable difference.
I would have to argue that this applies to games, too. There is more than one game. There's even more than one type of game. Heck, I can even invent my own!
Even in scripted games, there's almost always more to do. Beat the game faster, get a higher score, die fewer times, etc. Many of them have goals built into them where you have to find hidden things or do certain things in a specified timeframe and you almost certainly won't get them all on the first playthrough of the game.
Perhaps you just happen to prefer the type of games that lend themselves to being open ended anyway, that's cool. Your reply gives me the impression that you dislike non open ended games due to a skewed view of them, though. I'm assuming you also read books and watch movies and they suffer from the complaints you have about games far more than the games usually do... hell, if you go to the theater it's even starting to cost damned near as much as a game or even more if you buy older or used games, which throws out the money argument.
Personally, I prefer a game that ends eventually. It gives me a point where I can say "that was a cool story" or "that game was pretty fun, I bet I can beat it again faster and get super weapon x" or even just "alright, it's done. Now I can move onto a new game and see what story and/or challenges await me there" without feeling like I've still got stuff to do in the current game.
Whether MS' technique works or not, it's bad for us as it limits our choices.
Of course I'm sure neither of these is a concern to symantec, only that they'll make less money, but they are still valid arugments to consider.
As to R (and I believe NC-17) movies? Those aren't restricted by law. A movie theater is legally allowed to let you into any movie they want, same goes for wal-mart selling them to you. They check ID's because they have chosen to at both movie theaters and stores. I imagine a movie theater might get into trouble with the MPAA if they were found to be letting underaged kids into R (without an adult) and NC-17 movies, but they won't with the law.
Read about the MPAA movie rating system here
The only difference between this and video games is that movies have an industry regulated outlet, the theaters, whereas games don't. Once you go to retail stores, games and movies are sold/not sold to minors pretty evenly in my experience.
If that's what they meant, that's an ass backwards, unclear as hell way to state it. While not necessarily technically correct, most people refer to the IP suite as TCP/IP, and so would include apps that are using UDP as using TCP/IP. Looks like they sort of clear it up a few lines down, but I stopped reading after that first line.
I "think" the point of the USB is so that you can use the nic as a seperate computer. It's kind of a neat idea if it didn't cost so much. My first thought was using it as some sort of poor man's blade server... get 3 or 4 and stick em in your pci slots. But not at $280 each, I could just buy a single computer that would outperform all of them combined for less. For a much more reasonable price it has some potential and niche uses. Of course, I don't trust these guys one bit. Their comments, such as (paraphrased) "most games today don't use tcp/ip" show that they don't know shit and are horrible liars. I'm sure there was more, but I stopped reading after that.
What? This may be a neat idea, although has some obvious issues as others have pointed out, but I can't trust a word these guys say after reading that.
Thinking games? We've got tons of strategy games, puzzle games, and adventure games. On top of that many other genres include puzzles, sometimes difficult ones.
Movie quality storylines and settings and acting? A good number of RPGs and adventure games would fall into this, with huge, thought out histories and well developed personalities. Just have a look at The Elder Scrolls or Xenosaga. Again, most other genres also have games that would fit these requirements with excellent acting, interesting stories, and fully developed societies and histories.
Perhaps people like the writer of the article are the problem, not the lack of respectable games.
Well, I believe what they are targetting by saying that they need to require this are things with "undisclosed" content, such as "nudity" in Oblivion bumping it from a T to an M and the hot coffee stuff bumping GTA from an M to an AO. Of course, what these jackasses are failing to realize is that under normal gameplay as designed by the developers, which is what the ESRB would be viewing, these things never would have been seen and so still would not have been included in the ratings (as they should not be).
On the other hand, it is possible for this to work to our advantage. It allows the ESRB to say "Look, assholes, we played the entire game just like you asked us to. This content does not come up in the normal gameplay. Now shut the fuck up and go regulate something else you know nothing about."
Really, I think this is a multiple part problem and I believe most of the solution will come with time. Some of these have already been pointed out by others, but I'm going to re-iterate them anyway. Keep in mind, I am not saying these are facts, though they are more or less stated as such, these are just my feelings on what's going on.
1) It's hard to write about technology. If you write about it in a way those who understand the technology will appreciate, the majority of your audience won't get it. If you write it in a way that the majority of your audience can understand, it's too watered down to actually say anything important. As has been said, perhaps this is because they're writing about the technology itself rather than the effects of the technology on society.
2) I think problem 1 is made greater by the choices and general personalities of the types of writers. I'm going to stereotype a bit, I realize there are exceptions and varying degrees of all of this. The geek, the one who understands the technology to be able to write about it in any meaningful way, is frequently going to be more interested in writing a technical paper about it than writing something for the masses or just working with the technology rather than being a journalist. Your average journalist is not a geek and as has been said, doesn't necesarily understand the technology, many people here I think would argue that to be true even about most of the technology journalists.
3) Older management. The people in charge of the magzines, newspapers, etc. are in the older crowd, the ones who didn't grow up with and don't necessarily understand the technology and see it all as a bunch of toys that aren't really needed. They don't want an accurate, thoughtful, article about video games or ipods or the internet because they don't understand or don't care about it. So, rather than getting good writing about it, they demand writing that will bring in money from those who give us the technology (as we frequently see dicussed regarding video game reviews).
4) Tied to number 3 is that most of the magazines are part of "Corporate America". You write what earns the money by making your customers happy... not your subscribers, but the people who pay big money to advertise in your magazine or give you kickbacks for a good review. We all know what big corporations are about, and it's rarely gaining customers by producing a quality product.
5) There are "hard hitting" technology journalists out there. They are writing the higher quality blogs, web comics, etc. They are not well known because they are part of the geek culture, which is still, technically, an underground scene in a sense. They are likely to stay this way for a long time due to language that is generally considered not suitable for the mainstream and talking about things most of the world doesn't currently understand or care to understand.
I think most of this will work itself out over time. As people are growing up with computers, the Internet, and video games society as a whole will at least have a better understanding of it all, if not the understanding us geeks have. When that happens we'll see articles written to a higher level. We'll have people writing about the technology and running the magazines and newspapers that cover it that grew up with the technology and have an interest in it because it's what they grew up with rather than just because it's the next big thing to cash in on.
For these same reasons, if my internet connection is acting up, I pull my linux boxes off the network and go to a default setup in the way the ISP tech support expects to see it. Windows XP behind the dsl modem, with the dsl modem software installed on the computer. Then if it's still having issues, I call them. I try to give people manning the phones the same level of being a good customer as I expected when I was on the phones.
As to working with other software, as others have been suggested, I think the best route to go is allow it but say "Hey, look, this has only been verified to work with this one software configuration. You can change it if you want, but it may or may not work, and there's no way we can provide support for it." That's completely fair to all parties and keeps the freedom of the free software, imo.
To me, this is a risk you take if you use used hardware. While certainly annoying for the end user, perhaps they should go ask their buddy what they did to the hardware before giving it to them. Also keep in mind that the company can always use a different OS or piece of software if they don't like the licensing, one that allows them to lock it down. I frequently think the free software zealots are going a little too far, but I'm not sure they are in this case. Making the software inaccessible is making it inaccessible, however good the reason for doing so might be. The people that have said to allow the changes, but have some sort of warning that makes it known that it is not in the default software configuration, are probably the ones on the correct and most reasonable track.
The thing is, when it comes to modifying embedded apps, firmware, etc. anyone who is doing such a thing should, in theory, be knowledgeable enough to understand why what they are doing cannot be supported. It's not Joe Smith, 45 year old plumber who uses a computer once a week at work to enter his timesheet, that is going to be changing the software. Plus, even if it is, anyone who has gotten suckered into phone support and actually has enough knowledge to understand this themselves will probably get fed up with it and have little trouble saying "Sorry, we don't support that. Thanks for calling." and hanging up if it becomes a problem.... or maybe I was just an asshole when I did phone support.
Are you sure everything you buy on amazon.com actually comes from amazon, though? I know a lot of the stuff I buy actually comes from other retailers that amazon hosts. I don't know if amazon recieves any percentage of the sales price from that or if they just get a flat fee, but in either case, it may not really be helping them much.