Apple has intimated such a change might cause a complete shutdown of the iTunes Music Store.
More importantly, what of the client software that interacts with the store? You know, the program that allows you to burn/listen/store "your" music?
As the user who submitted this article, I would like to point out that they removed my DRM fear mongering from my original submission. As a geek it's my duty to squeal like a stuck pig when troubles a brewin' and I think there's a rude awakening looming for a whole ton of iTunes users.
Essentially, I'm guessing the RIAA will pressure Apple into releasing or updating their client software to not decrypt the DRM'd songs (non iTunes Plus tracks) until the user coughs up the additional six cents. Hell, I have no way of knowing that this isn't already implemented in iTunes and Apple need only stop delivering the other half of keys to the clients to decrypt a user's data.
And that's why DRM has failed, continues to fail and will always fail. Nobody read the EULA/TOS of iTunes and nobody understands that when you're "buying" the song for a dollar, you're not buying anything but the right to listen to that song for some undetermined amount of time. Here's a simple case: What happens to "your songs" when you die?
Burn them to discs or convert them to an open format anyway you know possible, folks. That's the only advice I have--especially with this on the horizon. Buy Apple players, Amazon MP3s and look no further than the GPL for your software.
Is there any point to separate partitions for / and/home? I mean, if you were running different file systems on each of them I could see the point.
I have gone through four different version of Linux on my laptop: mandrake/mandriva -> fedora -> knoppix -> ubuntu. Guess how many times I've thanked 8 lb 6 oz baby Jesus that I had the foresight to separate the two? All my data from my college days is still intact under/home.
Linux and other Unix-like operating systems use the term "swap" to describe both the act of moving memory pages between RAM and disk, and the region of a disk the pages are stored on. It is common to use a whole partition of a hard disk for swapping. However, with the 2.6 Linux kernel, swap files are just as fast as swap partitions, although Red Hat recommends using a swap partition. The administrative flexibility of swap files outweighs that of partitions; since modern high capacity hard drives can remap physical sectors, no partition is guaranteed to be contiguous.
I'm no expert but the short answer to this is to look at your swap partition as your extended virtual memory. By saying that your swap partition should be 2x your main memory is like saying that you will never use 3x of what your main memory is (in this case 12GB). While that rule of thumb is a good one, there may in fact be applications today in the graphics and processing world that require insane amounts of memory. While Firefox is probably never going to reach that critical mass (nor will most average programs) it's probable that a few years from now it will be common place. I know it's insane to think of but 'ought to be enough for anybody' is not the phrase you want to throw around in the digital information world.
It's those days when I'm playing Warcraft through wine, listening to streaming radio through Amarok, have 20 windows open behind it, idling a LAMP server for my development projects, running a vent client, some form of news aggregater, pidgin & an e-mail client hooked up to several POP3/IMAP accounts that I am happy I erred on the side of a whole ton of swap space.
No, I think the summary answered that already. It implied that this should be sufficiently different enough from WoW that I could enjoy both games.
I played LotRO and it was feeling too much like WoW so I quit. Same with Warhammer. Buggier versions of WoW. I have high hopes for this as it sounds like the concept, classes & lore will be far enough away from WoW to provide me with entertainment.
This is going to shock and appall you but there can be multiple successful MMOs. You might think you need to invest all your time in one but I have often played multiple and enjoyed them.
You don't need to kill WoW to be successful, just try being original and a lot can happen! I only hope they don't cash out, release early, screw the users and just let it die after they've doubled production costs like so many others.
World of Warcraft - A game so fun that people pay for programs to play it for them.
You're telling me! I can't wait for World of World of Warcraft to come out! I'm going to roll a 90 lb famished Chinese man working for pennies an hour!
Mostly I'm amazed that MMOGlider had that kind of cash.
MMOGlider is the application, MDY would be the holder of the finances. After scanning the article, it seems that he is estimated to have sold 100,000 copies at $25 a pop resulting in $2.5 million... then you have all the costs of hosting and developing and lawyering and all that.
And as the bottom of the article says:
The case is due to go to court again in January 2009 when the remaining issues in the legal conflict look likely to be settled.
At issue will be whether MDY broke the US Digital Millennium Copyright Act and whether Mr Donnelly will have to pay the damages from his own pocket.
And there you have it, in all likelihood they are not sitting on $6 million. As the article says, it's a good thing MDY won its arguments about the 'damages' their program caused to Blizzard otherwise they would be looking at $12 or $18 million settlements.
And there's your sticky issue, what exactly are the damages. I hate this because if I know it's happening, it ruins WoW for me. But on the other hand, does it really ruin the game if someone magically goes from 1 to 70 in two weeks without working for it? I might be jaded that I had to put in hours of muscle distrophying arthritis inducing clicking to get there... but what's different now? So another player has more gold or resources, it's a tiny leg up in that game as the best items are won in PVP or require meticulous PVE to acquire.
The stickiest issue is that a lot of us are conflicted. It pisses us off that WoW is a little less fair but on the surface this was a guy who avoided all technical attempts Blizzard tried to thwart him in a great game of cat & mouse. In the end, he could claim he was just selling software that users happened to use to violate Blizzard's TOS and EULA with. I've heard the same arguments about BitTorrent and would probably side with the software makers in this case...
I guess for me 'sticky' isn't a good description of it. No, there are two core ideologies which are conflicting here. The gamer in me says that games should be as fair as possible. WoW is already naturally flawed to some degree in this way and it is Blizzard's responsibility to keep the playing field level. MMOGlider upsets this 'fairness' and destroys the inherent fun in the game. On the other side of the issue he was just a guy writing software and selling it. I could throw him in with the likes of spammers and botnet masters but it was just a legitimate client program running on a paying user's machine.
Add to this what we've suffered through from Blizzard including rootkits and unfounded bans and it's an issue that strikes very close to home.
But it could very easily turn into another www.facebook.com, where users don't realize how much personal or sensitive info they're putting out until after they get burned by it.
This is quite amusing to me. "Don't realize how much personal or sensitive info they're putting out?!" Uh, at what point does your brain fail to see problems with giving Facebook your credit card number for a gift to your friend? Goddamn klaxons go off with red spots exploding in my vision for me. Here's a picture of me free basing a controlled substance, what a great idea to put out online for all to see/have! Again, the old noggin' kicks in with "Danger! Danger Will Robinson!"
People are responsible for their actions. Stupidity doesn't exactly count as a valid defense. Otherwise there would be some pretty hilarious court cases.
It's your responsibility as a developer or company to make sure that your users data is safe. If you fail in this responsibility, you face the courts.
It's your responsibility as a user not to put sensitive information online! If you fail in this responsibility, you face consequences--employers and significant others are fully capable of operating browsers!
The responsibilities are clear to me--am I the only person that understands we are held to some amount of responsibility in using the web?! If you are a parent, please talk to your children about this! It's just like walking up to a stranger and telling them everything about you when you put that crap out in a public profile online. You shouldn't need to act as guardian of the whole internet. Inform people and show them how to protect themselves.
I am in disbelief over anyones the acceptance of the idea. Relinquishing control over your data to an outside source seems unfathomably retarded, no matter what kind of spin is put on it.
I am thinking that your problem is both immaturity and the assumption that cloud computing is supposed to replace everything. Well, it's not. No, it's not supposed to replace those applications where you put in your credit card info or social security number (whatever the hell that is). It might claim that it can but why would you do that?
Brace yourself but there are in fact applications for things like ec2 from Amazon. What if I wanted to design an informative website that might provide details and directions to a brick & mortar store while at the same time store comments from users?
I'm not putting any spin on this, I'm just pointing out that Cloud Computing has a place. It might be smaller than what the companies tell us, it might be larger than what we think. But to outright rule out a potentially cheap, distributed, robust service like this as a developer is really really closed minded. I'm personally willing to give it a chance as I build on open source frameworks and have a lot of applications I would like to toy with that don't deal in sensitive data. And I don't have a whole lot of change laying around to do it!
Nor am I a big fan of people who paint reality to be only black or white.
There are shades of gray.
For anyone to stand up and pronounce this as either 100% good or 100% bad is laughable. I'm certain Google & Amazon will/have found a completely viable and useful application for cloud computing--I mean unless I'm mistaken I think it's already working with Open Social. I'm sure it will have at the very least a niche application in computing. It might be very small, it might be very big. But to call it complete stupidity is quite ignorant.
'Somebody is saying this is inevitable -- and whenever you hear somebody saying that, it's very likely to be a set of businesses campaigning to make it true.'
Uh oh, look at this! Oh no! Stupid stupid stupid! Just because businesses and proponents want it, doesn't necessarily make it evil or stupid. That's being shoved down my throat and self fulfilled prophecy and... bad stuff...
Furthermore, if the source code is GPL and the application is public and the data is not sensitive... we may have a candidate for cloud computing! Why not let some other company/people provide the cycles? Surely one could dream up some application even if it is merely a trivial/novel concept.
This summary leaves out the entire second half of the article:
On the other hand, social networking profiles gave some job seekers an edge over the competition. Twenty-four percent of hiring managers who researched job candidates via social networking sites said they found content that helped to solidify their decision to hire the candidate. Top factors that influenced their hiring decision included:
48% - candidate's background supported their qualifications for the job
43% - candidate had great communication skills
40% - candidate was a good fit for the company's culture
36% - candidate's site conveyed a professional image
31% - candidate had great references posted about them by others
30% - candidate showed a wide range of interests
29% - candidate received awards and accolades
24% - candidate's profile was creative
Some of the numbers on this article have to be wrong... 22% shared sensitive information from their prior employer... ?! What could that be?
Would the fact that we've learned something new about steel thanks to the way the Twin Towers fell, silence the conspiracy lovers?
No, of course not. What the hell was I thinking there?
Well, we're getting WAY off topic from the original story here but people deal with loss differently. Some Americans have a near psychotic desire to be a part of bringing justice to those responsible. 9/11 affected us all in different ways. From losing loved ones to losing a sense of security to losing our rights, everyone believes they've lost something.
I listened to a This American Life episode where a man whose mother was raped and killed spent a large part of his life going over what had happened. He even went so far as to go to the jail and interview one of the murderers. He was so convinced there was more to it than just a random robbery gone wrong.
The "Truthers" (as they call themselves) are trying to cope with this in a unique way where they will relentlessly seek the truth--to a fault. They won't ever be satisfied because the attacks were so inconceivable that there must be an equally outrageous explanation for them. Occam's Razor is not in their reasoning kit anymore.
Personally, I think we just need to let them have their community and leave them alone and give them the information they need. You can't change the way these people think and as Americans they have this right to believe what they want--so long as they don't go infringing on other people's life, liberty & pursuit of happiness.
Following World War II, the public's imagination has gone wild from JFK's assassination to 9/11. It's simply something that can no longer be avoided.
And not a single one of those possibilities is actually justifiable.
Yeah, I never really said they were. Don't be confused, I wasn't rushing to the defense of the cell phone companies. I've danced the dance of customer support with both AT&T/Singular and Verizon. As far as I'm concerned they can both collapse and I would happily switch to the next in line.
Doesn't stop me from speculating on what might have actually caused this.
I'm glad the senator is asking questions, hell senators should be asking companies questions left and right. It's not like they're suing them. I'm really curious about a lot of companies revolving around the war in Iraq, oil, computers, auto industry, health care, etc.
Unfortunately, I'm sure we're all aware this is just a senator trying to make it look like he's rattling a few cages to look better for re-election in the future. "Champion of consumer rights!" his campaign will read (if it doesn't already). Oh no, an anti-trust suit?! We don't want them to end up like Microsoft when they... wait, what actually happened to Microsoft?
Wake me up when we actually have a beat down like Ma Bell being divided up into some real competition.
Senator Herb Kohl (D-Wis.) has started an inquiry on the rising prices of text messaging (up 100% since 2005) that has occurred almost in sync with the consolidation of 6 major carriers down to 4.
Well, it could be that the competition was driving prices down to a lower level and then after the two consolidated, this (money losing) price reduction natural re-adjusted back up.
Another reason could just be that it's just as easy to sell plans at 10 cents a txt as it is to sell them at 5 cents a txt. We simply don't realize the cost adds up as consumers.
It could also be that people use text messages about twice as much now as they did in 2005 and the hardware just can't take it, so they adjust the price to reduce usage.
I think we've discussed this absurd price before. I am quite naive about the whole electrical engineering side to this but well versed in the software of it. If it costs nearly nothing for me to talk for a minute, why couldn't they wrap the txt into a digital signal identical to what our vocal signal is wrapped up in and just let the receiving unit decode it as a special text message across the same audio range (like the old phone modems)?
This will probably be the largest single investment in network infrastructure for developing countries in history. Google clearly wishes to use this project to enable broadband Internet access in developing regions...
Ok. Let's get a few things straight here. Phrases like "will probably" and "clearly wishes" are indicative of slant because they don't tell me anything. Let me tell you what's clear here: Google is making an upfront investment to reach 3 billion new customers. Yes, it's great news for those people but I will spell out the only motive Google has--they do not want another homegrown Baidu popping up in Swahili or any other language. They will reach these people first and hand them Google in their native language.
Google's going to bring these people broadband at 95% of their current price and Google's going to make massive profit. In 2007, Google netted $4.2 billion. They are supporting O3B because it is a smart business move and their stock will go up because of it.
I'm not saying this is a bad thing, it's great for the people but Google's only motive is "How do we reach the other 1/2 of the world's population with our services?"
Are you crazy? I found that ad effective & informative.
I can't wait to get down to my local shoe store to try out a pair of "The Conquistador" although everyone knows they 'run tight.' I can't wait to finally have shoes I can wear in my shower!
Well, there goes my ability to watch any reruns of Seinfeld... starring a Microsoft shill & a racist.
I caught this ad on TV with my non-technical retail employed roommate. And, acknowledging my predisposition to the big evil, I turned and atonally inquired what he thought of the commercial. "What?" he replied, "I don't think when I watch commercials, I just watch them." My god, it's worse than I thought, normal people just might digest this!
What was it that prompted Slashdot to start posting its hate mail? Was someone clamoring for this? I see mild humor in it but I get a bigger kick out of watching people duke it out in ping pong comments than reading misdirected hate towards the editors.
Also, what is the expected result of our discussions of this stuff? Is it to pick it apart and analyze it? Is it to provide user generated retorts that you can't due to legal reasons? I shall try a little of both.
Is Slashdot trying to add an optional low brow element to satisfy users that have left for other sites dedicated to that? Because, you know that half of your users are going to tag this 'pleasestop' or some such negative approval tag.
Also, why does it look different than the rest of Slashdot? Isn't it just another section? Why do you need another CSS for it? I seem to think it would be better site design to have a thorough reused theme but maybe you want the reader to know it's Idle. Who knows? Sure seems to upset a lot of people.
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"I'm relly sick of the level of discrimination that goes on here."
This level of reverence for the moderation system never ceases to amaze me. Hell, I myself can have a sour day if I'm given a thrashing on a post. This person doesn't even seem to be a regular user and they are already upset.
A very peculiar amount of power, these mod points are. Enough for someone to call a negative moderation discrimination!
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"I try to live a good clean life by learning all I can and nurturing my body and spirit."
Despite being raised Roman Catholic for 18 years, this still baffles me. I know I'm not the first person to share this view (I think I read about it in Vonnegut's "Palm Sunday") but there is a reason I don't swear often. It's not so I can be 'clean' and 'pure'... it's so that when I do swear, people know I'm not fucking around. Seriously, if you're dropping f-bombs left and right then where do you go when you're genuinely upset? I prefer to not raise my voice so those words are reserved for extreme moments. I feel bad for the people who incorporate them into everyday life... how loud do you think an injured rapper would have to raise their voice before people gave them medical attention?
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"I came here to learn about hockey and there is no hockey to be found. Your lucky that I didn't send you any money or we would have a big problem right now."
Am I the only person that had the sudden urge to register hockeydot.org and have it redirect to Slashdot?
"If you don't want others to be confused to I suggest you think about changing your name to something that isn't obviously about hockey. I asked some coworkers and they agree..."
Are these the same coworkers that face physical abuse or verbal ridicule if they don't agree with you?
"... I'm not just some idiot. Come up with a name that means something."
Of course you're not an idiot, you're just a hockey fan. And if <insert object here> isn't bleeding with hockey (in this case the internet), you are angered with it. I understand. I'm from Minnesota where many of your kind roam around in large herds laying waste to beer and stadiums. I would suggest moving there for solace and the ability to experience all hockey all the time.
It's great that they're trying to reduce abuse but I had no problem posting about YouVacuousCoffeeNosedMaloderousPervert.com on my FaceBook profile. They sure do have a strange definition of what is & isn't abusive.
My starving artist friend in NYC developed a short video on his mac and was faced with exactly this dilemma. So he sent out an e-mail with a link to the site where he was hosting a portal page. He simply said in the page that you could go watch the embedded YouTube video he had there if you didn't care about quality (and to be honest, his video really didn't require it) but then said that if you were a quality snob or if you couldn't make out the YouTube video, you could click the links.
At the bottom, he had a list of various Quicktime sizes. One was pretty much HD and he said that if you didn't have a large high quality display that you should just go for the medium version. He also pointed out you could download them by right clicking if (and his provider is horrendous) you got choppy video.
Nobody brought his site to his knees, 90% of the people probably just watched the YouTube video and everyone could watch it.
You could do a similar thing, hell you could even point out that you don't need to install QuickTime or a DIVX codec if you just watch from the portal page or visit YouTube.
Remember, you may be a quality snob but your audience isn't always so I would leave the choice to them. Is there something about your video that makes it look unbearable on YouTube? Is the animation and its features really that detailed and fine?
If it is, I have another idea. I don't know how this works but I buy my Cinematic Titanic dvds from EZ-Takes (also known as DVD Wagon) and it looks like they'll sell anything on there for a low price. You could contact a company that sells streaming video or DVD ISOs for low prices like $1 and then just not get anything for profit and use them as a cheap host for your audience. You might not see profits but you'll retain the rights to your video/audio and have a way someone can spend a dollar and get the highest quality possible from you. There's probably a more reliable company to do this through, I just know of EZ Takes.
On top of that, it's just one more hierarchical power structure that inevitably becomes corrupt.
I happen to be listening to Lola Vs Powerman & the Money-Go-Round by The Kinks and there's some great lyrics on this in "Get Back in Line":
'Cause that union man got such a hold over me
He's the man who decides if I live or I die, if I starve or I eat
Then he walks up to me and the sun begins to shine
Then he walks right past and I know that I've got to get back in the line
Get back, get back, get right back in the line
I also would be against IT Unions--on the mere basis that (like SatanicPuppy said) my connections would outweigh my skills. When I was a kid, my dad (an independent concrete pourer) was threatened by a Union. They would tell him that he's ruining the economy by pouring cement for barns much cheaper than the unionized companies and they would try to strong arm him into joining. They were telling him to pay more in Union dues than what he spent on food to feed our six member family.
Well--and this is all from the prospective of a geography ignorant non-lawyer American--the fact is that most policies are in place to avoid confusion. Ah, who am I kidding, they're there so nobody sues the hell out of anyone else. And a policy is there to stop the worst kind of lawsuits: class action. I'm sure you would notice this if you did the same analysis of other policies--like healthcare, dental or auto insurance policies. Yes, your health and your automobile might seem more important than your privacy but the United States Justice system (is supposed to--like in the NYTimes article) stop companies from swindling any of those.
And there's not a lot you can do about this, we're going to want to sue the pants off a bastard company if suddenly our name and address is being traded on a disc with 50,000 others on the black market. So they write these policies to be air tight and they use terms that have legal connotations because I'm sure the only time these things are scrutinized are in court anyway. And the second you take away that level of granularity, I'm sure you see yourself as a company open up to lawsuits.
I'm not an expert but I would guess that a shift to Chinese made chips will be harder on the environment since Chinese pollution laws are generally more lax. Also, if it is pushed by the government, I'm sure they're willing to overlook things. I believe corruption is rife in the People's Republic of China. This is very bad for Intel (and probably AMD, why not?) since there will be a much more cheaply made multi-core CPU available on the market.
Great for the end consumer, however. Possibly even really really good for me as a United States citizen as Intel/AMD will be forced to drop prices to compete in the world market.
Also, there's the 'patriotic' view of this and the fact that the U.S. owes China dearly as a trade partner. Import import import import and export nothing. This would be further propagating that, thus hurting the dollar a tiny bit more.
Oh well, such are the intricacies of world economics.
With web crackdowns like this becoming more and more frequent do you think we will start to see similar (overt) activities from US and European governments?
I doubt it... although, I think China & Russia will follow suit (if they aren't already).
From what I've read, the short of this state of emergency is simply an elite urban ruling class that supports the Thai monarchy and abolished the prime minister back in 2006. The elite class is calling itself the People's Alliance for Democracy even though they have little to nothing to do with fair representation across the entire state. Again, I don't live there, this is second hand information.
Basically, violent protests from both sides are going down and people are dying. Hopefully shutting down the sites that point out the obvious will stop these clashes. I sincerely doubt it, this will clearly be more justification for the rest of Thailand to revolt against the Monarchy.
Unfortunately, Russia & China could both be seen in this same light with Beijing & Moscow being islands of wealth in an otherwise third world country.
I doubt the US and much of Europe need to do this... although I was getting a bit frightened there when it seemed for the longest time that a small select elite few wanted the war in Iraq. When Bush was re-elected, there wasn't much I could say however. I feel like half the country wanted it so there's no sense in me violently reacting to this. I'm certain the Thai feel much differently about their situation.
If you can't see healthy dissent in a country to some extent--something is terribly wrong.
Google bomb your url with their company name by creating a Slashdot user account with their name and submit thousands of stories each week with your url in the homepage. You can also drop the company's name with an href to your url in CNN comments and on comments for popular blogs to get your pagerank up.
Then inform them that your Search Engine Optimization Chief just caused your URL to be at the top of Google's result list.
If they fail to triple their offer, begin redirecting to goatse. You should see them quadruple their offer then. It's called hardball.
Slashdot Mirror
Apple has intimated such a change might cause a complete shutdown of the iTunes Music Store.
More importantly, what of the client software that interacts with the store? You know, the program that allows you to burn/listen/store "your" music?
As the user who submitted this article, I would like to point out that they removed my DRM fear mongering from my original submission. As a geek it's my duty to squeal like a stuck pig when troubles a brewin' and I think there's a rude awakening looming for a whole ton of iTunes users.
Essentially, I'm guessing the RIAA will pressure Apple into releasing or updating their client software to not decrypt the DRM'd songs (non iTunes Plus tracks) until the user coughs up the additional six cents. Hell, I have no way of knowing that this isn't already implemented in iTunes and Apple need only stop delivering the other half of keys to the clients to decrypt a user's data.
And that's why DRM has failed, continues to fail and will always fail. Nobody read the EULA/TOS of iTunes and nobody understands that when you're "buying" the song for a dollar, you're not buying anything but the right to listen to that song for some undetermined amount of time. Here's a simple case: What happens to "your songs" when you die?
Burn them to discs or convert them to an open format anyway you know possible, folks. That's the only advice I have--especially with this on the horizon. Buy Apple players, Amazon MP3s and look no further than the GPL for your software.
Is there any point to separate partitions for / and /home? I mean, if you were running different file systems on each of them I could see the point.
I have gone through four different version of Linux on my laptop: mandrake/mandriva -> fedora -> knoppix -> ubuntu. Guess how many times I've thanked 8 lb 6 oz baby Jesus that I had the foresight to separate the two? All my data from my college days is still intact under /home.
For this simple reason, I heavily recommend it.
'Is 8 gigs of swap really necessary?'
With a 750GB hard drive selling under $100, what has changed?
... and 8GB of space is still trivial with a 750GB hard drive.
Yeah, your 256MB of space was trivial when you had a 30GB hard drive
That said, I'll forward you some common information on paging.
Linux and other Unix-like operating systems use the term "swap" to describe both the act of moving memory pages between RAM and disk, and the region of a disk the pages are stored on. It is common to use a whole partition of a hard disk for swapping. However, with the 2.6 Linux kernel, swap files are just as fast as swap partitions, although Red Hat recommends using a swap partition. The administrative flexibility of swap files outweighs that of partitions; since modern high capacity hard drives can remap physical sectors, no partition is guaranteed to be contiguous.
I'm no expert but the short answer to this is to look at your swap partition as your extended virtual memory. By saying that your swap partition should be 2x your main memory is like saying that you will never use 3x of what your main memory is (in this case 12GB). While that rule of thumb is a good one, there may in fact be applications today in the graphics and processing world that require insane amounts of memory. While Firefox is probably never going to reach that critical mass (nor will most average programs) it's probable that a few years from now it will be common place. I know it's insane to think of but 'ought to be enough for anybody' is not the phrase you want to throw around in the digital information world.
It's those days when I'm playing Warcraft through wine, listening to streaming radio through Amarok, have 20 windows open behind it, idling a LAMP server for my development projects, running a vent client, some form of news aggregater, pidgin & an e-mail client hooked up to several POP3/IMAP accounts that I am happy I erred on the side of a whole ton of swap space.
You forgot to answer the most important question.
No, I think the summary answered that already. It implied that this should be sufficiently different enough from WoW that I could enjoy both games.
I played LotRO and it was feeling too much like WoW so I quit. Same with Warhammer. Buggier versions of WoW. I have high hopes for this as it sounds like the concept, classes & lore will be far enough away from WoW to provide me with entertainment.
This is going to shock and appall you but there can be multiple successful MMOs. You might think you need to invest all your time in one but I have often played multiple and enjoyed them.
You don't need to kill WoW to be successful, just try being original and a lot can happen! I only hope they don't cash out, release early, screw the users and just let it die after they've doubled production costs like so many others.
World of Warcraft - A game so fun that people pay for programs to play it for them.
You're telling me! I can't wait for World of World of Warcraft to come out! I'm going to roll a 90 lb famished Chinese man working for pennies an hour!
Mostly I'm amazed that MMOGlider had that kind of cash.
MMOGlider is the application, MDY would be the holder of the finances. After scanning the article, it seems that he is estimated to have sold 100,000 copies at $25 a pop resulting in $2.5 million ... then you have all the costs of hosting and developing and lawyering and all that.
And as the bottom of the article says:
The case is due to go to court again in January 2009 when the remaining issues in the legal conflict look likely to be settled.
At issue will be whether MDY broke the US Digital Millennium Copyright Act and whether Mr Donnelly will have to pay the damages from his own pocket.
And there you have it, in all likelihood they are not sitting on $6 million. As the article says, it's a good thing MDY won its arguments about the 'damages' their program caused to Blizzard otherwise they would be looking at $12 or $18 million settlements.
... but what's different now? So another player has more gold or resources, it's a tiny leg up in that game as the best items are won in PVP or require meticulous PVE to acquire.
...
And there's your sticky issue, what exactly are the damages. I hate this because if I know it's happening, it ruins WoW for me. But on the other hand, does it really ruin the game if someone magically goes from 1 to 70 in two weeks without working for it? I might be jaded that I had to put in hours of muscle distrophying arthritis inducing clicking to get there
The stickiest issue is that a lot of us are conflicted. It pisses us off that WoW is a little less fair but on the surface this was a guy who avoided all technical attempts Blizzard tried to thwart him in a great game of cat & mouse. In the end, he could claim he was just selling software that users happened to use to violate Blizzard's TOS and EULA with. I've heard the same arguments about BitTorrent and would probably side with the software makers in this case
I guess for me 'sticky' isn't a good description of it. No, there are two core ideologies which are conflicting here. The gamer in me says that games should be as fair as possible. WoW is already naturally flawed to some degree in this way and it is Blizzard's responsibility to keep the playing field level. MMOGlider upsets this 'fairness' and destroys the inherent fun in the game. On the other side of the issue he was just a guy writing software and selling it. I could throw him in with the likes of spammers and botnet masters but it was just a legitimate client program running on a paying user's machine.
Add to this what we've suffered through from Blizzard including rootkits and unfounded bans and it's an issue that strikes very close to home.
But it could very easily turn into another www.facebook.com, where users don't realize how much personal or sensitive info they're putting out until after they get burned by it.
This is quite amusing to me. "Don't realize how much personal or sensitive info they're putting out?!" Uh, at what point does your brain fail to see problems with giving Facebook your credit card number for a gift to your friend? Goddamn klaxons go off with red spots exploding in my vision for me. Here's a picture of me free basing a controlled substance, what a great idea to put out online for all to see/have! Again, the old noggin' kicks in with "Danger! Danger Will Robinson!"
People are responsible for their actions. Stupidity doesn't exactly count as a valid defense. Otherwise there would be some pretty hilarious court cases.
It's your responsibility as a developer or company to make sure that your users data is safe. If you fail in this responsibility, you face the courts.
It's your responsibility as a user not to put sensitive information online! If you fail in this responsibility, you face consequences--employers and significant others are fully capable of operating browsers!
The responsibilities are clear to me--am I the only person that understands we are held to some amount of responsibility in using the web?! If you are a parent, please talk to your children about this! It's just like walking up to a stranger and telling them everything about you when you put that crap out in a public profile online. You shouldn't need to act as guardian of the whole internet. Inform people and show them how to protect themselves.
I am in disbelief over anyones the acceptance of the idea. Relinquishing control over your data to an outside source seems unfathomably retarded, no matter what kind of spin is put on it.
I am thinking that your problem is both immaturity and the assumption that cloud computing is supposed to replace everything. Well, it's not. No, it's not supposed to replace those applications where you put in your credit card info or social security number (whatever the hell that is). It might claim that it can but why would you do that?
Brace yourself but there are in fact applications for things like ec2 from Amazon. What if I wanted to design an informative website that might provide details and directions to a brick & mortar store while at the same time store comments from users?
I'm not putting any spin on this, I'm just pointing out that Cloud Computing has a place. It might be smaller than what the companies tell us, it might be larger than what we think. But to outright rule out a potentially cheap, distributed, robust service like this as a developer is really really closed minded. I'm personally willing to give it a chance as I build on open source frameworks and have a lot of applications I would like to toy with that don't deal in sensitive data. And I don't have a whole lot of change laying around to do it!
It's stupidity.
I'm not a big fan of black and white formats.
Nor am I a big fan of people who paint reality to be only black or white.
There are shades of gray.
For anyone to stand up and pronounce this as either 100% good or 100% bad is laughable. I'm certain Google & Amazon will/have found a completely viable and useful application for cloud computing--I mean unless I'm mistaken I think it's already working with Open Social. I'm sure it will have at the very least a niche application in computing. It might be very small, it might be very big. But to call it complete stupidity is quite ignorant.
'Somebody is saying this is inevitable -- and whenever you hear somebody saying that, it's very likely to be a set of businesses campaigning to make it true.'
Uh oh, look at this! Oh no! Stupid stupid stupid! Just because businesses and proponents want it, doesn't necessarily make it evil or stupid. That's being shoved down my throat and self fulfilled prophecy and ... bad stuff ...
... we may have a candidate for cloud computing! Why not let some other company/people provide the cycles? Surely one could dream up some application even if it is merely a trivial/novel concept.
Furthermore, if the source code is GPL and the application is public and the data is not sensitive
On the other hand, social networking profiles gave some job seekers an edge over the competition. Twenty-four percent of hiring managers who researched job candidates via social networking sites said they found content that helped to solidify their decision to hire the candidate. Top factors that influenced their hiring decision included:
Some of the numbers on this article have to be wrong ... 22% shared sensitive information from their prior employer ... ?! What could that be?
Would the fact that we've learned something new about steel thanks to the way the Twin Towers fell, silence the conspiracy lovers?
No, of course not. What the hell was I thinking there?
Well, we're getting WAY off topic from the original story here but people deal with loss differently. Some Americans have a near psychotic desire to be a part of bringing justice to those responsible. 9/11 affected us all in different ways. From losing loved ones to losing a sense of security to losing our rights, everyone believes they've lost something.
I listened to a This American Life episode where a man whose mother was raped and killed spent a large part of his life going over what had happened. He even went so far as to go to the jail and interview one of the murderers. He was so convinced there was more to it than just a random robbery gone wrong.
The "Truthers" (as they call themselves) are trying to cope with this in a unique way where they will relentlessly seek the truth--to a fault. They won't ever be satisfied because the attacks were so inconceivable that there must be an equally outrageous explanation for them. Occam's Razor is not in their reasoning kit anymore.
Personally, I think we just need to let them have their community and leave them alone and give them the information they need. You can't change the way these people think and as Americans they have this right to believe what they want--so long as they don't go infringing on other people's life, liberty & pursuit of happiness.
Following World War II, the public's imagination has gone wild from JFK's assassination to 9/11. It's simply something that can no longer be avoided.
And fwiw, since he's got his own millions of bucks from the Kohl's department store chain, he doesn't need money from anybody.
Then who will champion the horrible abuse of consumers from retail department stores?!
And not a single one of those possibilities is actually justifiable.
Yeah, I never really said they were. Don't be confused, I wasn't rushing to the defense of the cell phone companies. I've danced the dance of customer support with both AT&T/Singular and Verizon. As far as I'm concerned they can both collapse and I would happily switch to the next in line.
... wait, what actually happened to Microsoft?
Doesn't stop me from speculating on what might have actually caused this.
I'm glad the senator is asking questions, hell senators should be asking companies questions left and right. It's not like they're suing them. I'm really curious about a lot of companies revolving around the war in Iraq, oil, computers, auto industry, health care, etc.
Unfortunately, I'm sure we're all aware this is just a senator trying to make it look like he's rattling a few cages to look better for re-election in the future. "Champion of consumer rights!" his campaign will read (if it doesn't already). Oh no, an anti-trust suit?! We don't want them to end up like Microsoft when they
Wake me up when we actually have a beat down like Ma Bell being divided up into some real competition.
Senator Herb Kohl (D-Wis.) has started an inquiry on the rising prices of text messaging (up 100% since 2005) that has occurred almost in sync with the consolidation of 6 major carriers down to 4.
Well, it could be that the competition was driving prices down to a lower level and then after the two consolidated, this (money losing) price reduction natural re-adjusted back up.
Another reason could just be that it's just as easy to sell plans at 10 cents a txt as it is to sell them at 5 cents a txt. We simply don't realize the cost adds up as consumers.
It could also be that people use text messages about twice as much now as they did in 2005 and the hardware just can't take it, so they adjust the price to reduce usage.
I think we've discussed this absurd price before. I am quite naive about the whole electrical engineering side to this but well versed in the software of it. If it costs nearly nothing for me to talk for a minute, why couldn't they wrap the txt into a digital signal identical to what our vocal signal is wrapped up in and just let the receiving unit decode it as a special text message across the same audio range (like the old phone modems)?
... including its Picasa photo service ...
You mean they own my bestiality pics?
And my death threats?
... and they aren't even going to be from me!
Man, they are going to have some serious legal issues
This will probably be the largest single investment in network infrastructure for developing countries in history. Google clearly wishes to use this project to enable broadband Internet access in developing regions...
Ok. Let's get a few things straight here. Phrases like "will probably" and "clearly wishes" are indicative of slant because they don't tell me anything. Let me tell you what's clear here: Google is making an upfront investment to reach 3 billion new customers. Yes, it's great news for those people but I will spell out the only motive Google has--they do not want another homegrown Baidu popping up in Swahili or any other language. They will reach these people first and hand them Google in their native language.
Google's going to bring these people broadband at 95% of their current price and Google's going to make massive profit. In 2007, Google netted $4.2 billion. They are supporting O3B because it is a smart business move and their stock will go up because of it.
I'm not saying this is a bad thing, it's great for the people but Google's only motive is "How do we reach the other 1/2 of the world's population with our services?"
Seinfeld-Windows TV Ad Anything But 'Delicious'
Are you crazy? I found that ad effective & informative.
... starring a Microsoft shill & a racist.
I can't wait to get down to my local shoe store to try out a pair of "The Conquistador" although everyone knows they 'run tight.' I can't wait to finally have shoes I can wear in my shower!
Well, there goes my ability to watch any reruns of Seinfeld
I caught this ad on TV with my non-technical retail employed roommate. And, acknowledging my predisposition to the big evil, I turned and atonally inquired what he thought of the commercial. "What?" he replied, "I don't think when I watch commercials, I just watch them." My god, it's worse than I thought, normal people just might digest this!
Also, what is the expected result of our discussions of this stuff? Is it to pick it apart and analyze it? Is it to provide user generated retorts that you can't due to legal reasons? I shall try a little of both.
Is Slashdot trying to add an optional low brow element to satisfy users that have left for other sites dedicated to that? Because, you know that half of your users are going to tag this 'pleasestop' or some such negative approval tag.
Also, why does it look different than the rest of Slashdot? Isn't it just another section? Why do you need another CSS for it? I seem to think it would be better site design to have a thorough reused theme but maybe you want the reader to know it's Idle. Who knows? Sure seems to upset a lot of people.
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"I'm relly sick of the level of discrimination that goes on here."
This level of reverence for the moderation system never ceases to amaze me. Hell, I myself can have a sour day if I'm given a thrashing on a post. This person doesn't even seem to be a regular user and they are already upset.
A very peculiar amount of power, these mod points are. Enough for someone to call a negative moderation discrimination!
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"I try to live a good clean life by learning all I can and nurturing my body and spirit."
Despite being raised Roman Catholic for 18 years, this still baffles me. I know I'm not the first person to share this view (I think I read about it in Vonnegut's "Palm Sunday") but there is a reason I don't swear often. It's not so I can be 'clean' and 'pure' ... it's so that when I do swear, people know I'm not fucking around. Seriously, if you're dropping f-bombs left and right then where do you go when you're genuinely upset? I prefer to not raise my voice so those words are reserved for extreme moments. I feel bad for the people who incorporate them into everyday life ... how loud do you think an injured rapper would have to raise their voice before people gave them medical attention?
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"I came here to learn about hockey and there is no hockey to be found. Your lucky that I didn't send you any money or we would have a big problem right now."
Am I the only person that had the sudden urge to register hockeydot.org and have it redirect to Slashdot?
"If you don't want others to be confused to I suggest you think about changing your name to something that isn't obviously about hockey. I asked some coworkers and they agree ..."
Are these the same coworkers that face physical abuse or verbal ridicule if they don't agree with you?
" ... I'm not just some idiot. Come up with a name that means something."
Of course you're not an idiot, you're just a hockey fan. And if <insert object here> isn't bleeding with hockey (in this case the internet), you are angered with it. I understand. I'm from Minnesota where many of your kind roam around in large herds laying waste to beer and stadiums. I would suggest moving there for solace and the ability to experience all hockey all the time.
It's great that they're trying to reduce abuse but I had no problem posting about YouVacuousCoffeeNosedMaloderousPervert.com on my FaceBook profile. They sure do have a strange definition of what is & isn't abusive.
My starving artist friend in NYC developed a short video on his mac and was faced with exactly this dilemma. So he sent out an e-mail with a link to the site where he was hosting a portal page. He simply said in the page that you could go watch the embedded YouTube video he had there if you didn't care about quality (and to be honest, his video really didn't require it) but then said that if you were a quality snob or if you couldn't make out the YouTube video, you could click the links.
At the bottom, he had a list of various Quicktime sizes. One was pretty much HD and he said that if you didn't have a large high quality display that you should just go for the medium version. He also pointed out you could download them by right clicking if (and his provider is horrendous) you got choppy video.
Nobody brought his site to his knees, 90% of the people probably just watched the YouTube video and everyone could watch it.
You could do a similar thing, hell you could even point out that you don't need to install QuickTime or a DIVX codec if you just watch from the portal page or visit YouTube.
Remember, you may be a quality snob but your audience isn't always so I would leave the choice to them. Is there something about your video that makes it look unbearable on YouTube? Is the animation and its features really that detailed and fine?
If it is, I have another idea. I don't know how this works but I buy my Cinematic Titanic dvds from EZ-Takes (also known as DVD Wagon) and it looks like they'll sell anything on there for a low price. You could contact a company that sells streaming video or DVD ISOs for low prices like $1 and then just not get anything for profit and use them as a cheap host for your audience. You might not see profits but you'll retain the rights to your video/audio and have a way someone can spend a dollar and get the highest quality possible from you. There's probably a more reliable company to do this through, I just know of EZ Takes.
I happen to be listening to Lola Vs Powerman & the Money-Go-Round by The Kinks and there's some great lyrics on this in "Get Back in Line":
'Cause that union man got such a hold over me
He's the man who decides if I live or I die, if I starve or I eat
Then he walks up to me and the sun begins to shine
Then he walks right past and I know that I've got to get back in the line
Get back, get back, get right back in the line
I also would be against IT Unions--on the mere basis that (like SatanicPuppy said) my connections would outweigh my skills. When I was a kid, my dad (an independent concrete pourer) was threatened by a Union. They would tell him that he's ruining the economy by pouring cement for barns much cheaper than the unionized companies and they would try to strong arm him into joining. They were telling him to pay more in Union dues than what he spent on food to feed our six member family.
Ridiculous.
Well--and this is all from the prospective of a geography ignorant non-lawyer American--the fact is that most policies are in place to avoid confusion. Ah, who am I kidding, they're there so nobody sues the hell out of anyone else. And a policy is there to stop the worst kind of lawsuits: class action. I'm sure you would notice this if you did the same analysis of other policies--like healthcare, dental or auto insurance policies. Yes, your health and your automobile might seem more important than your privacy but the United States Justice system (is supposed to--like in the NYTimes article) stop companies from swindling any of those.
And there's not a lot you can do about this, we're going to want to sue the pants off a bastard company if suddenly our name and address is being traded on a disc with 50,000 others on the black market. So they write these policies to be air tight and they use terms that have legal connotations because I'm sure the only time these things are scrutinized are in court anyway. And the second you take away that level of granularity, I'm sure you see yourself as a company open up to lawsuits.
I'm not an expert but I would guess that a shift to Chinese made chips will be harder on the environment since Chinese pollution laws are generally more lax. Also, if it is pushed by the government, I'm sure they're willing to overlook things. I believe corruption is rife in the People's Republic of China. This is very bad for Intel (and probably AMD, why not?) since there will be a much more cheaply made multi-core CPU available on the market.
Great for the end consumer, however. Possibly even really really good for me as a United States citizen as Intel/AMD will be forced to drop prices to compete in the world market.
Also, there's the 'patriotic' view of this and the fact that the U.S. owes China dearly as a trade partner. Import import import import and export nothing. This would be further propagating that, thus hurting the dollar a tiny bit more.
Oh well, such are the intricacies of world economics.
With web crackdowns like this becoming more and more frequent do you think we will start to see similar (overt) activities from US and European governments?
I doubt it ... although, I think China & Russia will follow suit (if they aren't already).
... although I was getting a bit frightened there when it seemed for the longest time that a small select elite few wanted the war in Iraq. When Bush was re-elected, there wasn't much I could say however. I feel like half the country wanted it so there's no sense in me violently reacting to this. I'm certain the Thai feel much differently about their situation.
From what I've read, the short of this state of emergency is simply an elite urban ruling class that supports the Thai monarchy and abolished the prime minister back in 2006. The elite class is calling itself the People's Alliance for Democracy even though they have little to nothing to do with fair representation across the entire state. Again, I don't live there, this is second hand information.
Basically, violent protests from both sides are going down and people are dying. Hopefully shutting down the sites that point out the obvious will stop these clashes. I sincerely doubt it, this will clearly be more justification for the rest of Thailand to revolt against the Monarchy.
Unfortunately, Russia & China could both be seen in this same light with Beijing & Moscow being islands of wealth in an otherwise third world country.
I doubt the US and much of Europe need to do this
If you can't see healthy dissent in a country to some extent--something is terribly wrong.
This is capitalism.
Google bomb your url with their company name by creating a Slashdot user account with their name and submit thousands of stories each week with your url in the homepage. You can also drop the company's name with an href to your url in CNN comments and on comments for popular blogs to get your pagerank up.
Then inform them that your Search Engine Optimization Chief just caused your URL to be at the top of Google's result list.
If they fail to triple their offer, begin redirecting to goatse. You should see them quadruple their offer then. It's called hardball.