Hey man, are you saying there is no place on the web for broke teens with no skill? My kids aren't paying for a domain out of thier allowance just to say hey. Let MySpace and Friendster and $$$$$$ster take care of a place for these kids to "shout out" to each other. It is free to them and it allows communication in a much more time independent manner than IM. Plus it is another place to store and share their pictures. Why did they get those digital cameras for Christmas?
My hat's off to the MySpace users for thier democratic approach. Sometimes it works, Note to selves though, MURDOCH=FOX=FNC=Very Large Corp=Very Right Republican. Not always the best friend to the youth and their movements.
Easy to keep an eye on things when all on your servers it is.
Here, Here, and I'm tired of the same old stories in print and movies too. It's always Romance, Action, Suspense, SciFi, Crime, Horror.
We need new genres for everything. Also why can't we get another day in the week? Week In Week Out its Mon,Tues,Weds,Thur,Fri,Sat,Sun. When will the "calendar makers" listen to the consumer and put 2 more days in between Sat and Sun?
On a serious note. Quit bemoaning it and draft Your Original Ideas, If you can't code them there are DevHouses who need writers/story editors with Original Ideas. Or you can sit back and say "Entertain me!", and then whine because you get what sells best.
Original Fun games don't come from Editorials, they come from creative thinkers and coders.
First mistake, ignore and dismiss the malcontents as insane.
Do not listen to the reasons they feel this way, do nothing about the percieved sense of eroding liberties and values. Also pay no attention to the news, World News, Red Cross, Amnesty International, ACLU, and the rest of those tree-hugging hippie pinko commies. Worked so well as early as the late 60s or indeed as late as the early 70s.
If you think you can impress me by making up numbers, you are wrong.
1,2,3,4,Kw0,5. You're right not that impressive. Unfortunately I'm not making anything up, Drive around FL and pick me up an Xbox360, spend some time on the phone or better yet on the web trying to get one.
By that pace it will take the Playstation 3 only 1 or 2 months to catch up to the XBox360.
Of course the Microsoft marketing department will call that a success, just like they call losing 4 billion a success with the XBox1.
You think only Xbox 1 owners are purchasing 360s. No my friend, Xbox's are also still selling. PS2 sales do not equal PS3 sales. I will grant you PS2 owners are more likely to purchase a ps3 over an xbox360, however they got to wait for it, right now there is no choice. PS3 sales are 0. 360 sales aren't. You assume MS won't sell the next shipment as fast as they sold the first we'll see. Right now the facts are not in your favor. New consoles purchased by people without last-gen consoles are going to be 360 sales until PS3 and revolution hit the shelves. I'm pulling for the big N this time around. With a sneak attack return of the Dreamcast from Sega.
No more please I grow tired of this argument. Your console can beat up my console, you win. Meanwhile a great big check gets cashed in redmond.
Merely 81%. Try again, divide it up geographically. 100% in FL, 100% in Calif, Texas, etc etc.
oh, they have 20 in Oklahoma. Christmas isn't even here yet.
One more time.
The Present
325,000 Xbox 360 Customers.
0 PS3 Customers.
0 Revolution Customers SomeTime in 2006 / Christmas Future
1 Million Xbox 360 Customers(its only been 30 days man)
First PS3 sale
First Revolution sale
Whose winning? Be a hell of a come from behind victory for Nintendo.
Hey I all for the downfall of MS in the PC world but without anywhere to go they will never leave. I say we surrender our calculators and phones and game machines and atms to them and take back the Desktop PC.
When RMS came to speak here at Cal I was not too impressed. He was interesting, entertaining, but the guy seemed (this especially came out in the Q&A session at the end) like a ranting madman rather than a proper spokesman for GNU. ZD must have REALLY edited the interview's transcript to get it into the form that's been put up on the site.
RMS comes off best in print to the people who do not know him. He seems like a fanatic because he is about some things he feels are of the utmost importance. In written responses he tends to edit himself to a less madman-like rant.
I personally like a little nutjob in my geniuses. Maybe that's just self-justification though.
I agree that the FLOSS model has led to much innovation. But the story ends there -
Not a student of history, I see. Look around at the IT Landscape today. Now think back to 1980. The story is being written right now. You can be an author or a critic but you can not deny its impact. Take a cruise on over to IBM's website, Apple's, What do you see. Take a look in your devices around the house Router,TIVo, Hot Tub etc...
I for one, won't be spending my life without a job, contributing to free software (although I might do it as a side-hobby).
I for one won't either. Hobby, try model airplanes. Contribute to free software because it serves a purpose. In my case my job requires me to use tools (now OSS tools, Thank me very much) I contribute to those tools to further my productivity, and I write free software that operates electronic controls that we manufacture. And I will never go back to the OLD way. The improvements that I have seen in just 3 years in both my productivity and better OSS are astounding.
Furthermore, most freelance work or custom applications don't pay well compared to salaried jobs.
This statement leads me to believe you have never had either. Custom Apps can be expensive as hell plus don't forget those awesome support contracts. Nothing better than a Webserver running apache with custom webapps and a yearly suppport contract (unless you can only write buggy webapps.)
There are strengths to OSS, as well as weaknesses.
Hmm weakness. Lets see, weakness. Right you can't hide your bugs. You can't hide unfair practices. You cannot create proprietary formats. You can however Sleep soundly at night, and wake up a part of a community. Sometimes wacky, sometimes overly political, overzealous, down right rude, almost uniformly amazingly insightful and clever.
Fascism has little to nothing to do with business, instead it is about the state or more specifically the ruler. It is a pragmatic form of government when it comes to business. If anything, it functions under a permanent war economy with the major industries cooperating. In other words, it is a centralized economy that still retains private property and freedom of commerce.
Your definition is reasonable, (quick check, yeah close enough.) Now reread that paragraph, Sounds like "US" to me. And Yet after typin those words you write
The US and other countries today are not fascist nor resemble anything like a fascist nation.
Hunh?
To call it such is at the least a bit ignorant.
I'll agree it may be open to interpretation, but RMS is far from ignorant to suggest that the F-word interpretation is valid. He is not alone and the facts and figures of life (especially that bit about permanent war economy) support his view.
I'll have some ridiculous replies accusing me of being a Bush supporter (hardly).
No actually most people go through stages, kinda like the stages of grief. You can start at any stage but we all end up at the same place. Amazed at the competence involved in acquiring wealth at the same time bewildered by the total ineptitude of actual governing a country.
These guys have very clear ideas of how they wanted to change the government. Wouldn't it be nice if there were some of those guys on the left.
So if they had 400 and sold 325 it's a good number too?
What matters is that fewer units were sold.
This question will not die, Why is it that only AC keep asking it?
Look, for the last time and for the non econ majors in the crowd. What's better: selling damn near all you can produce or having a stockpile of unsold goods? If every day kids & parents are going to walmart asking for 360s and can't get them, MS I wish I had your problem. As long as they refill supplies before the other guys lauch their next gen consoles, All will be kosher at Bill's House.
Scarcity has a psycological effect on the buying public. When the trucks roll again, chock full of Xbox360s to those "major cities", you will once again see lines of people queing for them.
Talking Point #1 - The XBox 360 is very scarce and therefore valuable. A kind reader sent us an IM that his local GameSpot store will not have very many 360s to sell and that most pre-orders will arrive AFTER Christmas. Mom and Dad definitely have things that are scarce--jewelry, wine, hair--and will understand this concept. Consider printing out important newspaper articles repeating this claim of scarcity and avoid saying "My friend IMed me that they would be scarce." This will not work. HINT: Remind your parents that by allowing you to purchase this as soon as possible, they will avoid the mad holiday gift buying rush. Also accept the obvious ploy of "We can get it, but you can't open it until later." This, in their eyes, is a way to teach you about patience. This helps them feel better, so accept it.
Source:http://us.gizmodo.com/gadgets/home-entert ainment/xbox-360-talking-pointsconvincing-the-old- 138223.php
From Moore:"You can challenge the decision, but we made a decision a long time ago that we're going to ship this holiday in the three major regions of the world," Moore stated. "I think when the dust settles, it will be proven to be the right thing, and it will become the default way that you launch a video-game console in our industry."
...
Although there is no official figure, analysts have pegged the initial shipment in the U.S. as somewhere between 400,000 and 700,000 units.
Maybe all these people are just wasting their time so losers can pirate games, but then again, if you look closely you will find more than a few Developers like the Idea of a $150.00 PC with TV out and Net Access.
I know I owe them my thanks, I'm purchasing an old black box right after the next price drop around 2006 (PS3 Launch). I probably won't even pick up 1 game. I just need a media extension in another room.
Silly Trolls.
I hardly think this is a troll unfortunately mod points are gone. Little Help?
When a post is informative, even if it is biased it should be marked as such. O.K. I agree it will NEVER happen this SONY/LUCASARTS we're discussing but the parent post is still correct. If it wasn't a StarWars (Rape me by the month please.) MMORPG but instead an FPS like they are trying to make it we could all run deprecated servers.(Full of hacks and cheats). But its not.
LucasArts has a long standing policy of not suing not-for-profit fan projects, I say we start a clone of the old Galaxies just for the disabled and disenfranchised(best usage ever)
GNU/SWGalaxies. AnyOne?, I'm looking at you PLANESHIFT People.
I do however, find the hackers sense of "ethics" quite laughable -- That they are some sort of heroes "fighting" an "unfair" company. Typical hacker rationale: Locking it gives us the right to crack it.
You are mistaking the hacker ethic. Think of it this way. Since I bought it, it belongs to me and I can use it anyway I see fit.
I own several things which now serve a totally different purpose from which the manufacturer intended. His intentions are not an issue now that it is no longer his.
Paraphrasing RMS, a hacker is someone who uses tools for a purpose other than normally intended.
Might be best to let him speak for himself.
It is hard to write a simple definition of something as varied as hacking, but I think what these activities have in common is playfulness, cleverness, and exploration. Thus, hacking means exploring the limits of what is possible, in a spirit of playful cleverness. Activities that display playful cleverness have "hack value".
Yet when I say I am a hacker, people often think I am making a naughty admission, presenting myself specifically as a security breaker. How did this confusion develop?
Around 1980, when the news media took notice of hackers, they fixated on one narrow aspect of real hacking: the security breaking which some hackers occasionally did. They ignored all the rest of hacking, and took the term to mean breaking security, no more and no less. The media have since spread that definition, disregarding our attempts to correct them. As a result, most people have a mistaken idea of what we hackers actually do and what we think.
You can help correct the misunderstanding simply by making a distinction between security breaking and hacking--by using the term "cracking" for security breaking. The people who do it are "crackers". Some of them may also be hackers, just as some of them may be chess players or golfers; most of them are not.
* the belief that information-sharing is a powerful positive good, and that it is an ethical duty of hackers to share their expertise by writing free software and facilitating access to information and computing resources wherever possible; and/or
* the belief that system hacking for fun and exploration is ethically acceptable as long as the hacker commits no theft, vandalism, or breach of confidentiality.
Both of these normative ethical principles are widely, but by no means universally, accepted among hackers.
There, now don't we all feel a little more informed.
From Best Buy Open Letter to XBox360 Customers
on
Why You Can't Buy A 360
·
· Score: 3, Informative
TO: Open Letter to Customers
FROM: Brian Dunn, President - Retail, North America
RE: Launch of Xbox 360
CC: Best Buy Store, District and Territory Employees
DATE: December 6, 2005
I'm writing to apologize.
While all of us at Best Buy were thrilled to be part of the recent launch of Microsoft's Xbox 360 video game system -- one of the most anticipated events in the history of electronic gaming -- the launch did not go as we had hoped. We sold out of Xbox 360s nationwide in less than two hours, and most of our stores did an outstanding job of serving our gaming customers. I'd like to thank the majority of our employees, who provided a terrific experience for customers at the launch date. However, our promotional activities in certain cases failed to follow company guidelines. As a result, some of our valued gaming customers had an experience in our stores that was inconsistent with what you've come to expect from us, as a leader in the consumer electronics industry.
Specifically, customers in some Best Buy stores were told that they were required to buy additional Xbox accessories or services if they wanted one of the sought-after Xbox 360 consoles, even though we advertised the Xbox 360 console alone. I want to be very clear that Best Buy does not condone pressuring customers to purchase items they may not want or that may not fit their lifestyle. In fact, these behaviors are in direct conflict with our desire to serve customers' needs better than anyone else, and our values of honesty and integrity.
We are currently investigating all leads about promotional practices that may have violated the company's guidelines, and we will take disciplinary actions as appropriate. We have also reminded all of our stores about our policies with respect to launches of hot products. Meanwhile, on behalf of Best Buy, I'd like to offer a sincere apology to any customers who felt pressured to buy items they did not want.
Customers who are unhappy with Xbox 360-related purchases made in November 2005 may return unwanted items for a full refund at any Best Buy store. In addition, if your Xbox 360 purchasing experience did not meet your expectations for any reason, please e-mail us at xbox360@bestbuy.com. (Employees with information pertinent to our investigation are encouraged to call our Ethics Hot Line instead.)
Lastly, I would like to invite you back to our stores, particularly later this month, when Best Buy will receive more shipments of Xbox 360s. While supplies continue to be very limited, we are truly excited about this new gaming platform, and we'd like to deliver the best of that experience to you. We promise an in-store experience that is focused on your needs and the needs of everyone on your holiday gift list.
Slashdot Mirror
My hat's off to the MySpace users for thier democratic approach. Sometimes it works, Note to selves though, MURDOCH=FOX=FNC=Very Large Corp=Very Right Republican. Not always the best friend to the youth and their movements.
Easy to keep an eye on things when all on your servers it is.
http://www.americanprogress.org/site/pp.asp?c=biJR J8OVF&b=122948
Who is Rupert Murdoch?
How one right-wing billionaire uses his business and media empire to pursue a partisan agenda at the expense of democracy.
We need new genres for everything. Also why can't we get another day in the week? Week In Week Out its Mon,Tues,Weds,Thur,Fri,Sat,Sun. When will the "calendar makers" listen to the consumer and put 2 more days in between Sat and Sun?
On a serious note. Quit bemoaning it and draft Your Original Ideas, If you can't code them there are DevHouses who need writers/story editors with Original Ideas. Or you can sit back and say "Entertain me!", and then whine because you get what sells best.
Original Fun games don't come from Editorials, they come from creative thinkers and coders.
Like this Guy Here:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Will_Wright#Exte rnal_links Have you read/heard about Spore http://spore.ea.com/ or http://www.google.com/search?q=Spore+will+wright&s tart=0&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&client=firefox-a&rls=org. mozilla:en-US:official
seems pretty innovative to me.
I now return you to your regularly scheduled WhinaPaLuza.
Thanks, You have my continued support.
Me too, but measurements and persistant units would be Sweet.
I think su meant pretty badly suited.
Sorry, But I just can't get rid of this strange mental picture of an ugly naked snake.
Do not listen to the reasons they feel this way, do nothing about the percieved sense of eroding liberties and values. Also pay no attention to the news, World News, Red Cross, Amnesty International, ACLU, and the rest of those tree-hugging hippie pinko commies. Worked so well as early as the late 60s or indeed as late as the early 70s.
Devils Advocacy != FOSS Advocacy
Stop That, ... Its Silly, and a bit suspect I think....
1,2,3,4,Kw0,5. You're right not that impressive. Unfortunately I'm not making anything up, Drive around FL and pick me up an Xbox360, spend some time on the phone or better yet on the web trying to get one. By that pace it will take the Playstation 3 only 1 or 2 months to catch up to the XBox360. Of course the Microsoft marketing department will call that a success, just like they call losing 4 billion a success with the XBox1. You think only Xbox 1 owners are purchasing 360s. No my friend, Xbox's are also still selling. PS2 sales do not equal PS3 sales. I will grant you PS2 owners are more likely to purchase a ps3 over an xbox360, however they got to wait for it, right now there is no choice. PS3 sales are 0. 360 sales aren't. You assume MS won't sell the next shipment as fast as they sold the first we'll see. Right now the facts are not in your favor. New consoles purchased by people without last-gen consoles are going to be 360 sales until PS3 and revolution hit the shelves. I'm pulling for the big N this time around. With a sneak attack return of the Dreamcast from Sega.
No more please I grow tired of this argument. Your console can beat up my console, you win. Meanwhile a great big check gets cashed in redmond.
FSM Bless The Honorable District Judge John E. Jones III , May he be touched by "his noodly appendages".
Merely 81%. Try again, divide it up geographically. 100% in FL, 100% in Calif, Texas, etc etc. oh, they have 20 in Oklahoma. Christmas isn't even here yet.
One more time.
The Present
325,000 Xbox 360 Customers.
0 PS3 Customers.
0 Revolution Customers
SomeTime in 2006 / Christmas Future
1 Million Xbox 360 Customers(its only been 30 days man)
First PS3 sale
First Revolution sale
Whose winning? Be a hell of a come from behind victory for Nintendo.
Hey I all for the downfall of MS in the PC world but without anywhere to go they will never leave. I say we surrender our calculators and phones and game machines and atms to them and take back the Desktop PC.
.....
/cricketsound
RMS comes off best in print to the people who do not know him. He seems like a fanatic because he is about some things he feels are of the utmost importance. In written responses he tends to edit himself to a less madman-like rant.
I personally like a little nutjob in my geniuses. Maybe that's just self-justification though.
I agree that the FLOSS model has led to much innovation. But the story ends there -
Not a student of history, I see. Look around at the IT Landscape today. Now think back to 1980. The story is being written right now. You can be an author or a critic but you can not deny its impact. Take a cruise on over to IBM's website, Apple's, What do you see. Take a look in your devices around the house Router,TIVo, Hot Tub etc...
I for one, won't be spending my life without a job, contributing to free software (although I might do it as a side-hobby).
I for one won't either. Hobby, try model airplanes. Contribute to free software because it serves a purpose. In my case my job requires me to use tools (now OSS tools, Thank me very much) I contribute to those tools to further my productivity, and I write free software that operates electronic controls that we manufacture. And I will never go back to the OLD way. The improvements that I have seen in just 3 years in both my productivity and better OSS are astounding.
Furthermore, most freelance work or custom applications don't pay well compared to salaried jobs.
This statement leads me to believe you have never had either. Custom Apps can be expensive as hell plus don't forget those awesome support contracts. Nothing better than a Webserver running apache with custom webapps and a yearly suppport contract (unless you can only write buggy webapps.)
There are strengths to OSS, as well as weaknesses.
Hmm weakness. Lets see, weakness. Right you can't hide your bugs. You can't hide unfair practices. You cannot create proprietary formats. You can however Sleep soundly at night, and wake up a part of a community. Sometimes wacky, sometimes overly political, overzealous, down right rude, almost uniformly amazingly insightful and clever.
And the winner in "Proving conclusively the U.S. is in fact facist"
Nice work. I don't feel so well.
Fascism has little to nothing to do with business, instead it is about the state or more specifically the ruler. It is a pragmatic form of government when it comes to business. If anything, it functions under a permanent war economy with the major industries cooperating. In other words, it is a centralized economy that still retains private property and freedom of commerce.
Your definition is reasonable, (quick check, yeah close enough.) Now reread that paragraph, Sounds like "US" to me. And Yet after typin those words you write
The US and other countries today are not fascist nor resemble anything like a fascist nation.
Hunh?
To call it such is at the least a bit ignorant.
I'll agree it may be open to interpretation, but RMS is far from ignorant to suggest that the F-word interpretation is valid. He is not alone and the facts and figures of life (especially that bit about permanent war economy) support his view.
I'll have some ridiculous replies accusing me of being a Bush supporter (hardly).
No actually most people go through stages, kinda like the stages of grief. You can start at any stage but we all end up at the same place. Amazed at the competence involved in acquiring wealth at the same time bewildered by the total ineptitude of actual governing a country.
These guys have very clear ideas of how they wanted to change the government. Wouldn't it be nice if there were some of those guys on the left.
That's because he by hand, motion captured his little brother jumping off the couch and across the street and stuff.
Wow, I knew I'd find a use for that piece of trivia I had to watch a whole day of g4 for, I hope it was worth it. Source: ICONS on g4.
I think you mispelled Strategery. /Oblig SNL Reference
This question will not die, Why is it that only AC keep asking it?
Look, for the last time and for the non econ majors in the crowd. What's better: selling damn near all you can produce or having a stockpile of unsold goods? If every day kids & parents are going to walmart asking for 360s and can't get them, MS I wish I had your problem. As long as they refill supplies before the other guys lauch their next gen consoles, All will be kosher at Bill's House.
Scarcity has a psycological effect on the buying public. When the trucks roll again, chock full of Xbox360s to those "major cities", you will once again see lines of people queing for them.
Talking Point #1 - The XBox 360 is very scarce and therefore valuable. A kind reader sent us an IM that his local GameSpot store will not have very many 360s to sell and that most pre-orders will arrive AFTER Christmas. Mom and Dad definitely have things that are scarce--jewelry, wine, hair--and will understand this concept. Consider printing out important newspaper articles repeating this claim of scarcity and avoid saying "My friend IMed me that they would be scarce." This will not work. HINT: Remind your parents that by allowing you to purchase this as soon as possible, they will avoid the mad holiday gift buying rush. Also accept the obvious ploy of "We can get it, but you can't open it until later." This, in their eyes, is a way to teach you about patience. This helps them feel better, so accept it.t ainment/xbox-360-talking-pointsconvincing-the-old- 138223.php
Source:http://us.gizmodo.com/gadgets/home-enter
From Moore:"You can challenge the decision, but we made a decision a long time ago that we're going to ship this holiday in the three major regions of the world," Moore stated. "I think when the dust settles, it will be proven to be the right thing, and it will become the default way that you launch a video-game console in our industry."
...
Although there is no official figure, analysts have pegged the initial shipment in the U.S. as somewhere between 400,000 and 700,000 units.
Source:http://www.businessweek.com/innovate/conten t/nov2005/id20051121_022008.htm
Re:From TFA...(Score:0)
by Anonymous Coward on Saturday
fSck off and die,
Why so hostile?
the only reason anyone hacks an xbox is so they can play games they didn't buy
Right, nobody uses:4 28-2005Jan29.html XBOX Media Centerf ile=article&sid=22 SoftMod
http://www.xbox-linux.org/wiki/Main_Page FreeBSD,Linux and Darwin.
http://www.dynebolic.org/ Multimedia Studio XBOX Linux Live CD
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A46
http://www.xboxstation.com/modules.php?name=News&
http://xport.xbox-scene.com/ Emulation of Old Systems that we OWN
Maybe all these people are just wasting their time so losers can pirate games, but then again, if you look closely you will find more than a few Developers like the Idea of a $150.00 PC with TV out and Net Access.
I know I owe them my thanks, I'm purchasing an old black box right after the next price drop around 2006 (PS3 Launch). I probably won't even pick up 1 game. I just need a media extension in another room.
Silly Trolls.
Didn't I read somewhere they only had 400k units for NA launch? If so those are pretty good #s.
Can't we all just get a long ...... ?
When a post is informative, even if it is biased it should be marked as such. O.K. I agree it will NEVER happen this SONY/LUCASARTS we're discussing but the parent post is still correct. If it wasn't a StarWars (Rape me by the month please.) MMORPG but instead an FPS like they are trying to make it we could all run deprecated servers.(Full of hacks and cheats). But its not.
LucasArts has a long standing policy of not suing not-for-profit fan projects, I say we start a clone of the old Galaxies just for the disabled and disenfranchised(best usage ever)
GNU/SWGalaxies. AnyOne?, I'm looking at you PLANESHIFT People.
Your membership card will be arriving shortly, welcome to the club.
Yes, in the form of a rider on the next keep kids vaccinated bill, Submitted by Bill Frist.
You are mistaking the hacker ethic. Think of it this way. Since I bought it, it belongs to me and I can use it anyway I see fit.
I own several things which now serve a totally different purpose from which the manufacturer intended. His intentions are not an issue now that it is no longer his.
Paraphrasing RMS, a hacker is someone who uses tools for a purpose other than normally intended.
Might be best to let him speak for himself.
It is hard to write a simple definition of something as varied as hacking, but I think what these activities have in common is playfulness, cleverness, and exploration. Thus, hacking means exploring the limits of what is possible, in a spirit of playful cleverness. Activities that display playful cleverness have "hack value".
Yet when I say I am a hacker, people often think I am making a naughty admission, presenting myself specifically as a security breaker. How did this confusion develop?
Around 1980, when the news media took notice of hackers, they fixated on one narrow aspect of real hacking: the security breaking which some hackers occasionally did. They ignored all the rest of hacking, and took the term to mean breaking security, no more and no less. The media have since spread that definition, disregarding our attempts to correct them. As a result, most people have a mistaken idea of what we hackers actually do and what we think.
You can help correct the misunderstanding simply by making a distinction between security breaking and hacking--by using the term "cracking" for security breaking. The people who do it are "crackers". Some of them may also be hackers, just as some of them may be chess players or golfers; most of them are not.
Source http://www.stallman.org/articles/on-hacking.html
Might also Check Out Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hacker_ethic In modern parlance, the hacker ethic is either:
* the belief that information-sharing is a powerful positive good, and that it is an ethical duty of hackers to share their expertise by writing free software and facilitating access to information and computing resources wherever possible; and/or
* the belief that system hacking for fun and exploration is ethically acceptable as long as the hacker commits no theft, vandalism, or breach of confidentiality.
Both of these normative ethical principles are widely, but by no means universally, accepted among hackers.
There, now don't we all feel a little more informed.
FROM: Brian Dunn, President - Retail, North America
RE: Launch of Xbox 360
CC: Best Buy Store, District and Territory Employees
DATE: December 6, 2005
I'm writing to apologize.
While all of us at Best Buy were thrilled to be part of the recent launch of Microsoft's Xbox 360 video game system -- one of the most anticipated events in the history of electronic gaming -- the launch did not go as we had hoped. We sold out of Xbox 360s nationwide in less than two hours, and most of our stores did an outstanding job of serving our gaming customers. I'd like to thank the majority of our employees, who provided a terrific experience for customers at the launch date. However, our promotional activities in certain cases failed to follow company guidelines. As a result, some of our valued gaming customers had an experience in our stores that was inconsistent with what you've come to expect from us, as a leader in the consumer electronics industry.
Specifically, customers in some Best Buy stores were told that they were required to buy additional Xbox accessories or services if they wanted one of the sought-after Xbox 360 consoles, even though we advertised the Xbox 360 console alone. I want to be very clear that Best Buy does not condone pressuring customers to purchase items they may not want or that may not fit their lifestyle. In fact, these behaviors are in direct conflict with our desire to serve customers' needs better than anyone else, and our values of honesty and integrity.
We are currently investigating all leads about promotional practices that may have violated the company's guidelines, and we will take disciplinary actions as appropriate. We have also reminded all of our stores about our policies with respect to launches of hot products. Meanwhile, on behalf of Best Buy, I'd like to offer a sincere apology to any customers who felt pressured to buy items they did not want.
Customers who are unhappy with Xbox 360-related purchases made in November 2005 may return unwanted items for a full refund at any Best Buy store. In addition, if your Xbox 360 purchasing experience did not meet your expectations for any reason, please e-mail us at xbox360@bestbuy.com. (Employees with information pertinent to our investigation are encouraged to call our Ethics Hot Line instead.)
Lastly, I would like to invite you back to our stores, particularly later this month, when Best Buy will receive more shipments of Xbox 360s. While supplies continue to be very limited, we are truly excited about this new gaming platform, and we'd like to deliver the best of that experience to you. We promise an in-store experience that is focused on your needs and the needs of everyone on your holiday gift list.
Brian Dunn
Best Buy
Wow, Best Buy has an ethics HotLine.