"Entertainment industry executives are vehemently opposed to such a license, saying the government should not have role in setting the prices paid for music."
Who said anything about setting prices? The government is just trying to prevent the RIAA from expanding its monopolistic dominance of physical album sales into the computer world.
Just a few moments ago, one of our sysadmins was stupid enough to run the Kournikova vbscript, and we will be making fun of him for months because of it.
Of course, the real downer was the idiot on our helpdesk who ran it and sent it to all of our customer contacts.
Actually spam people with the message! Encrypt something, than encrypt it again into spam. Send it out to 200,000 email addresses combed from usenet posts, and the real recipient in the mess, and the governments will never be able to find the real recipient.
Most people will just give up and eat the loss. Dealing with these companies can be quite a hassle at times, and many people don't want to be bothered over a few dollars.
Windows = insecure
insecure = open to viruses
open to viruses = need for virus protection software
virus protection software = needs updates
updates = bad patent
This is... interesting. On one hand, the Open Sourcing might not be the best idea, as it could scare away vulture capitalists who would rather stick with a closed engine that can be licensed.
On the other hand, an MMOG is more likely to succeed based on content, community, and ease of use, so this gives people a good framework to build on.
If nothing else, open sourcing at least provides lots of free bug fixes, in that all the players dying to cheats and bugs will want them fixed ASAP.
Would an enterprising Kent Stater be so kind as to provide the Slashdot crowd with contact information for the campus police, so that we might politely provide supportive information to the misunderstanding cops and help out our fellow gamers?
Every time some Micro$oft marketroid opens his mouth about Linux, he succeeds in only doing two things; first he makes Micro$oft look like a company running scared, willing to trash talk, and even slander an opponent, in a desperate attempt to hang on to market share.
Second, and far more importantly, he shows us flaws. Remember the Mindcraft benchmarks? Had it not been for all of the deficient areas of the kernel exposed to the world there, would 2.4 have been so wonderful?
Let Micro$oft bitch and moan. Even its staunchest supporters now recognize it as little more than FUD for the most part, and if a real weakness in Linux is found, it will be fixed, and then made better than its Windows counterpart, until we finally beat Micro$oft into submission and Bill Gates can be run out of this industry on a rail.
I think that if these guys expect to do it in the next two years, some government has already done it in secret, and another team of private researchers is going to do it this year and go public when they finish, at which point the media will leave the loudmouths out in the cold.
They will, of course, be happy with this, as they will all be living off of the money they bilk out of investors beforehand.
Sure the G4 is in short supply and overpriced, but there has to be a better option than abandoning RISC processors with a large cache for those cheesy X86 machines!
Hopefully more of the older programmers out there will be willing to take a stand for their prior art. Just about all software patents are BS and can be beaten this way, but only when people have the courage to stand up to the corporations.
This could be nice. I'm sure it will be pretty popular in more than a few markets. Just think about how shweet it will be to get a Linux/Beowulf cluster that:
- Is prebuilt and tested
- Works right out of the box (Or at least with very little hassle.)
- Comes with backing/support from an old, well known vendor.
I like the idea of being able to justify linux to management...
I'll start paying for Napster as soon as they hire a decent programmer who can work out the bugs. $10 a month would actually be a good deal if every third download didn't "time out" for no apparent reason...
They also need to start booting people who trade in unfinished files. I'm sick of downloading songs and not getting the end of the song.
With the exception of the launch, Dreamcast sales have never been much more than sluggish in the US. In other countries, especially Japan, sales for the console were horrible. Even this holdiday season, more of the rather ancient Nintendo 64 were sold than Dreamcasts.
Topping it off, Sega had a large spike in Dreamcast sales this year, coinciding with the release of pirated Dreamcast games. Not surprisingly, game sales did not reflect the rise in console sales.
At the end of 2000, Sega was reported to be the least profitable company in Japan. The Dreamcast itself is still likely to be entirely unprofitable (As most game consoles are early on.) due to the cost of manufacturing the extremely proprietary hardware.
With game companies throwing fits over the GD-ROM copy protection method having been broken, Sega had no choice but to release new Dreamcasts incapable of playing anything on a CD-ROM, rendering the newer machines useless to pirates.
This really isn't a surprising move, given the facts. My only surprise was that it didn't come sooner, which it most likely would have had it not come from a country where corporation do not like admitting failure, especially in an area so hard to save face.
- VA loses a ton of money fighting this.
- Milberg sues and, if they win, they get a ton of money out of what they get from VA.
- The investors each get a check for their tenth of a cent, the only money left after the Milberg assholes get paid.
Does Microsoft really believe that the companies that do not give all employees net access will just start doing it now, just for a new OS?
I can't really imagine opening my secure lab up for this every time I need to rebuild a Windows box, much less a huge company opening the network for all the neophytes. This is just another open port for people to fuck with, continuing their tradition of insecure OSs.
"Now, once you've selected every possible option, and loaded this potentially-yours Apple with all the goodies that make these machines so great, look at the price."
You have that right. The last time I put together an Apple machine I would consider worth buying, it was over 2000 USD more than I spent on my ultra-high end PC.
Slashdot Mirror
From the article-
"Entertainment industry executives are vehemently opposed to such a license, saying the government should not have role in setting the prices paid for music."
Who said anything about setting prices? The government is just trying to prevent the RIAA from expanding its monopolistic dominance of physical album sales into the computer world.
Just a few moments ago, one of our sysadmins was stupid enough to run the Kournikova vbscript, and we will be making fun of him for months because of it.
Of course, the real downer was the idiot on our helpdesk who ran it and sent it to all of our customer contacts.
Actually spam people with the message! Encrypt something, than encrypt it again into spam. Send it out to 200,000 email addresses combed from usenet posts, and the real recipient in the mess, and the governments will never be able to find the real recipient.
Most people will just give up and eat the loss. Dealing with these companies can be quite a hassle at times, and many people don't want to be bothered over a few dollars.
Windows = insecure
insecure = open to viruses
open to viruses = need for virus protection software
virus protection software = needs updates
updates = bad patent
Yet another evil to blame on Bill Gates.
This is... interesting. On one hand, the Open Sourcing might not be the best idea, as it could scare away vulture capitalists who would rather stick with a closed engine that can be licensed.
On the other hand, an MMOG is more likely to succeed based on content, community, and ease of use, so this gives people a good framework to build on.
If nothing else, open sourcing at least provides lots of free bug fixes, in that all the players dying to cheats and bugs will want them fixed ASAP.
Would an enterprising Kent Stater be so kind as to provide the Slashdot crowd with contact information for the campus police, so that we might politely provide supportive information to the misunderstanding cops and help out our fellow gamers?
"But hell, lets start filing patents on every common net application, and any conceivable combination of layers from the OSI 7-Layer model..."
You forgot about layer 8: connection to your mom.
Every time some Micro$oft marketroid opens his mouth about Linux, he succeeds in only doing two things; first he makes Micro$oft look like a company running scared, willing to trash talk, and even slander an opponent, in a desperate attempt to hang on to market share.
Second, and far more importantly, he shows us flaws. Remember the Mindcraft benchmarks? Had it not been for all of the deficient areas of the kernel exposed to the world there, would 2.4 have been so wonderful?
Let Micro$oft bitch and moan. Even its staunchest supporters now recognize it as little more than FUD for the most part, and if a real weakness in Linux is found, it will be fixed, and then made better than its Windows counterpart, until we finally beat Micro$oft into submission and Bill Gates can be run out of this industry on a rail.
I think that if these guys expect to do it in the next two years, some government has already done it in secret, and another team of private researchers is going to do it this year and go public when they finish, at which point the media will leave the loudmouths out in the cold.
They will, of course, be happy with this, as they will all be living off of the money they bilk out of investors beforehand.
How does being backed by Lucent make something last sketchy? Last time I checked Lucent wasn't doing well at all, enough to lay off 16,000 people...
Sure the G4 is in short supply and overpriced, but there has to be a better option than abandoning RISC processors with a large cache for those cheesy X86 machines!
Let me live free or you die, corporate scum!
Hopefully more of the older programmers out there will be willing to take a stand for their prior art. Just about all software patents are BS and can be beaten this way, but only when people have the courage to stand up to the corporations.
This could be nice. I'm sure it will be pretty popular in more than a few markets. Just think about how shweet it will be to get a Linux/Beowulf cluster that:
- Is prebuilt and tested
- Works right out of the box (Or at least with very little hassle.)
- Comes with backing/support from an old, well known vendor.
I like the idea of being able to justify linux to management...
I'll start paying for Napster as soon as they hire a decent programmer who can work out the bugs. $10 a month would actually be a good deal if every third download didn't "time out" for no apparent reason...
They also need to start booting people who trade in unfinished files. I'm sick of downloading songs and not getting the end of the song.
"Well, I guess if you run windows you gotta get your service packs every few minutes ;"
Not as often as I have to track down a new kernel, gcc, glib, or any other host of little bits it takes to get new software to run under Linux.
With the exception of the launch, Dreamcast sales have never been much more than sluggish in the US. In other countries, especially Japan, sales for the console were horrible. Even this holdiday season, more of the rather ancient Nintendo 64 were sold than Dreamcasts.
Topping it off, Sega had a large spike in Dreamcast sales this year, coinciding with the release of pirated Dreamcast games. Not surprisingly, game sales did not reflect the rise in console sales.
At the end of 2000, Sega was reported to be the least profitable company in Japan. The Dreamcast itself is still likely to be entirely unprofitable (As most game consoles are early on.) due to the cost of manufacturing the extremely proprietary hardware.
With game companies throwing fits over the GD-ROM copy protection method having been broken, Sega had no choice but to release new Dreamcasts incapable of playing anything on a CD-ROM, rendering the newer machines useless to pirates.
This really isn't a surprising move, given the facts. My only surprise was that it didn't come sooner, which it most likely would have had it not come from a country where corporation do not like admitting failure, especially in an area so hard to save face.
Print off thousands of copies of goatse.cx and send in those. It would probably be illegal, but funny as hell.
Stuggling .com companies all suing each other to try and stay afloat, but how can it save them?
Are they just going to keep suing each other and passing the same money around, while the lawyers skim off the top?
Or will they all go out like etoys, spending all the loot suing people that have no money, and then start going under?
And linux is. What more do you need to know?
What this really means is...
- VA loses a ton of money fighting this.
- Milberg sues and, if they win, they get a ton of money out of what they get from VA.
- The investors each get a check for their tenth of a cent, the only money left after the Milberg assholes get paid.
Fuck lawyers.
Ogg Vorbis needs a better publicist :)
Does Microsoft really believe that the companies that do not give all employees net access will just start doing it now, just for a new OS?
I can't really imagine opening my secure lab up for this every time I need to rebuild a Windows box, much less a huge company opening the network for all the neophytes. This is just another open port for people to fuck with, continuing their tradition of insecure OSs.
"Now, once you've selected every possible option, and loaded this potentially-yours Apple with all the goodies that make these machines so great, look at the price."
You have that right. The last time I put together an Apple machine I would consider worth buying, it was over 2000 USD more than I spent on my ultra-high end PC.