"If they've copied things like graphics from the original game, then that is almost certainly a violation of copyright."
Which they pretty much have, hence why I made the comments I did. If it was a fringe case, I'd instead be encouraging him to look into fighting it, but as it's such a close clone I think he'd be stupid to do so.
"For example, storylines are not inherently subject to copyright"
Meh, perhaps I wasn't clear enough. If you copy the storyline including character names, settings and so forth then they certainly are, but if you're talking about rough outline of the story then you're right. I was referring to the former case.
"Having actually studied copyright law, I have to say it's not so clear as you make it out to be."
In a case like this, where he's basically copied the art and taken a large portion of the name, yes, it really is.
"See, now here is an interesting question. How close does a copy have to be to be a copy?"
Agreed, it's a fair question, but in this case it's relevant, the clone is so close there really isn't any room for that argument.
"Again, I think the issues are more complicated than you think they are."
In general yes, in this case no.
"Yeah, you might want to take your own advice."
Apparently you completely and utterly missed the text in brackets.
If you really think the best thing he can do is to fight it, why not put your money where you mouth is and offer to help fund his costs in exchange for a return of the money plus a little bit extra for helping? Or are you merely advising someone else gamble their money without being willing to put your money where your mouth is?
Look your points make for great debate in the general case of creating clones, but in this case the clone is so close to the original that there's really no debate to be had over it, and he'd get destroyed in court. If he'd made a clone without the use of "Pac", with different characters and stuff and it had happened then fine, I'd agree it's worth fighting, but in this particular case it's fucking stupid to do so or to suggest he really has a chance in hell of succeding in a battle against Namco over it if they're determined not to allow such close clones of their IP.
"However, copying the "look and feel" of a game using different code and different art, is not copyright infringement."
No, this is completely wrong. If you copy the characters- i.e. Pacman, then it IS copyright infringement, that is Namco's IP.
What you're thinking of is gameplay- that's something you can copy. You absolutely can create a game where you go round a maze collecting things whilst being chased by enemies, that's no problem, but copying the fundamental IP such as the characters or the storyline is a problem. That's why this is copyright infringement.
It's a copyright violation because he hasn't simply copied the game concept, but has largely copied the art and the name too. It would be allowed for example to create a Pacman clone, make the Pacman character green, maybe give him some red eyes or something, replace the power pills with energy drinks and replace the ghosts with aliens, then call the game "Green Gobbler" or whatever- this wouldn't be a copyright violation, but to outright copy what pacman is and is about- a yellow circle with a mouth chasing ghosts and then also putting Pac in the name absolutely is a blatant copyright violation.
I speak from experience having research it extensively before after having been in precisely this situation. Many many years ago, I worked on a clone of Teamfortress and after Valve aquired it and the IP they requested a shutdown of our mod- they had every right to do this because we hadn't simply copied the Fortress section of the name, but we had copied the class names and so forth too even though the artwork was original- we had copied the fundamental IP. We could get round this by simply changing some class names, and changing the mod name to remove Fortress, this was enough to satisfy Valve themselves even, but the fundamental point is if you're going to copy not just the concept, but the fundamental IP as well (i.e. characters, story, that sort of thing) then yes, it absolutely is a copyright violation.
You may not think it should be a copyright violation, but you're completely wrong to suggest that it is not. This is why people usually put IANAL in there post (IANAL btw!) because they know full well they're simply stating what they think may be true, but which possibly is not. Your advice is dangerous because you're telling him to fight against legal notice which he almost certainly has no chance of succeeding with and if he does take it all the way to court, it would probably destroy him as he really does not have a leg to stand on.
So to the person asking the original question in the summary- if you want to know what you did wrong theres your answer. The worst thing you can do is fight this, because legally, you seem to be completely in the wrong, and will hence almost certainly lose. There is no DCMA abuse here, beyond the fact that the DMCA is inherently abusive in it's very existence.
Except, having browsed the web for about 16 years now on Windows, and have never ever managed to do that. I guess unless you have some kind of mental condition that forces you to click every link you come across rather than just clicking on what you want and trust it's about as likely as winning the lottery. In fact, despite having worked in IT support in the past for some years and having worked alongside IT as a developer for even more years, I don't think I've ever once encountered a case of someone being infected by a drive-by on Windows (or any OS for that matter).
Besides, it's not like an Acrobat bug is a Windows bug, and it's not like software bugs in plugins and browsers don't exist on other platforms- MacOS X, iOS, and Linux have all had such vulnerabilities too:
The gap between theoretical attack vectors and actual attack vectors seems pretty large- to date I suspect far far more infections occur as a result of infected e-mail attachments/memory stick transfers, or people downloading and then executing something they think they trust from phishing sites and whatnot despite these problems being as old as the internet themselves.
"I can't help but cry bullshit to all of this WikiLeaks mess. I have difficulty believing the US government is unable to bring WikiLeaks down, either notoriously or covertly."
I think you'd be suprised, Assange has spoken briefly in the past of Australian intelligence sources giving him warnings, but interestingly right now he's in the UK and yet we've not followed through on the international arrest warrant for him.
I suspect he's actually got as much support amongst intelligence agencies as he has detractors. After the Lugovoi incident in London I'm sure MI5 would love nothing more than to prevent and capture a Russian assassin active on British territory.
Keep in mind that British foreign intelligence- MI6 had a list of their operatives leaked some years back, and the US was the first country to defend publication of the leak citing constitutional protections etc. and in that case there was equally a risk of lives in danger. This coupled with the fact Wikileaks may have contacts or information that even the security services haven't been able to acquire yet.
There's many reasons why Assage might well have just as many people in the security services on side as against him- if Wikileaks hasn't really done much serious to harm British interests, and if he has information that's important about say, Russian interests, and if he's the perfect honeypot for luring in foreign agents who may wish to spy on him or attempt assassination, then they may believe he is a rather valuable asset to keep around, at least for now.
We've had Russian assassinations on British soil, but then we never really believed the Russians were our friends in the first place. A US assassination on British soil? murder of someone on the sovereign land of their closest ally? Now that would be devastating for the US' position in the world, and would almost certainly do far more harm than any leaks have managed. The US (or Russia for that matter) getting rid of him might not be as easy as you think.
They had Black Friday deals in the UK all last week and had extremely limited numbers of stock, but rather than do things first come first served, they had an unstable platform on which to run it which repeatedly threw back 503 errors due to the load, meaning those that got processed weren't necessarily in order (i.e. 200 get through, 200 rejected, 200 through or whatever load it was taking).
If they can't even scale their own services on their platform, what hope is there for anyone else being able to rely on them? It's not like they haven't had problems either:
Seeing as she survived despite being posted thousands of miles from home in a warzone that put her in range of a heavily hostile nation equipped with air launched and land launched anti-ship missiles twice (Falklands, Iraq) I'd say the name turned out pretty well for her!
"The problem with people like Julian Assange is that he is fixated on America, when most of the rest of us are more concerned with where our next meal will come from or whether a family member or loved one will be there tomorrow for standing up for those things that are truly important."
Do you not realise the irony of this in relation to your comment you don't have a US centric view of things? Have you forgotten how many non-US leaks there were prior to the recent ones? Just because the US happened to be the source of the largest, most prominent leaks does not mean there is a fixation on the US. Why do you have that view? precisely because you have such a US centric view of the world- you think it's all about the US.
"If the US is corrupt and hypocritical as you suggest, it is not because of their leaders but their culture is that way. Their leaders are just a reflection of their people and there fore all of the leaks by Julian Assange will not change that. Those leaks, on the other hand have the real potential to disrupt the lives of the rest of us."
It doesn't matter if it's the politicians or the people, the US needs to change, and all other methods of trying to demonstrate this to them have failed. Will such drastic action as this work? probably not, but people aren't just going to roll over and continue to let the US commit abuses all over the world so if they're not going to change, they'll have to continue to suffer this sort of embarassment- it's entirely their choice.
"However, most believe that is not the case and things will escalate, in which case, the leaks are more likely to produce harm and a negative "what if" is the more likely scenario."
Most believe? really? I suggest most don't. The only real noise suggesting it will make things worse has come from US government itself and US conservative commentators. Meanwhile, in the rest of the world, "most" don't seem to believe things will be worse. North Korea is on the brink of war before the leaks even started after it shelled South Korea and intelligence reports suggest it plans to go further, a response to which South Korea stated would be targetted missile strikes. It really cannot get much worse there. Sorry but your theory that most people think it will get worse, and hence, that is the most likely scenario is completely and utterly unsubstantiated.
"Outside the US, there is not a lot of trust of the US. These leaks flame that distrust. More distrust means more unrest and less cooperation. Now, not only is the US involved, but other countries are too. For instance, the people of Yemen are anti-US. The government of Yemen has secretly been helping the US in fighting terrorism."
Indeed, and why do you think there is so much distrust of the US? precisely because it has been doing everything from spying at the UN which is a gross breach of international trust, through to carrying out covert attacks on sovereign nations. What do you think will increase trust in the US more, continuation of these things, or the US stopping to think about the consequences of it's actions and standing down from such things a bit more? Distrust in the US exists precisely because of things like extraordinary rendition, performed and uncovered well before the Wikileaks leaks- distrust in the US exists precisely because it's lack of transparency, it's theory that it can do what it wants regardless of what the rest of the world thinks.
"Now, that the news is out, will people in Yemen be as supportive of their leaders? Will it fuel the opposition party? If it fuels it enough, will there be a change in leadership and will that change in leadership be as supportive of US policy in the area? You can hope that it would all be for the good, but you would most likely be wrong. The action of releasing the Yemen documents will have negative consequences. The same is true for most of the others."
It depends, if the US continues to act in a way in which it upsets the citizens of these countries, then yes things will get worse, if the US instead learns it's lesson and steps back from such actions then things will improve.
You clearly have a horrendously US centric view of the world, so here's a thought excercise for you. You're implying that the US should be able to carry out covert strikes in Yemen, because if they weren't covert there would be uproar amongst the population of that country, what justification do you believe exists for US priorities in Yemen to be over and above the will of the population? Turn it around and think about it- if you found out the Yemeni government had been carrying out covert killings of American citizens on US soil, would your reaction really be "Oh well that's okay, they're only doing what they think is right for the world- it doesn't matter that they just blew up someone I went to school with, they know best!"? That's the reaction you're expecting the Yemeni people to have. One might have thought 9/11 was a wake up call for the US, in that it happened because a bunch of Muslims were kind of fucked off that the US had spent the last few decades using their country as a playground with the Russians- it's a shame people like yourself recognise actions have consequences, but are completely and utterly blind to the fact that those consequences only occur because of previous US actions.
Your world view simple seems just so utterly naive and US-centric, that you think it's okay that the US should be able to covertly assassinate citizens of a foreign state in their own soil, and you think that it'
No, I'm saying using a "what if" as a premise for an argument when there is an equal and opposite "what if" that perfectly counterbalances that argument then that argument is pointless because it only shows half the picture.
Your suggestion was that the leaks will make things worse, but you simply do not know that, they could equally make things better.
No, his job, is to leak materials, that's what Wikileaks is about. Only the US government is claiming people are at threat- how do you know in your example the guy even has family in Iran who are at threat? It's for the US to tell Wikileaks which reports represent a threat to life if they are to make such a claim in the first place- if they make that claim, and have the opportunity to save lives, but do not take it, then they are at fault.
But what if tensions in the middle east are resolved? what if Iran stands down now that it knows it's neighbours want it destroyed when it believed it's threat was from the US who has in fact been resisting attempts? What if North Korea stands down because it now knows China isn't quite the ally it thought it was?
You can't push "what if" scenarios, because you can equally say well what if a continuation of lack of openness makes the world worse? "What if" works both ways, it's stupid to use that argument for not doing something.
So like I said, why did the US refuse to point out any information that should be redacted when it had the opportunity too? Either it doesn't care about the threat, or the threat is not substantial.
It doesn't matter what's contained, the point is that if there really is any danger to anyone, then the US refused to aid wikileaks in redacting it when they had the opportunity choosing instead to let them push ahead with full disclosure.
Wikileaks isn't putting anyone at risk, when the US government put this charge forward to Wikileaks, Assange responded asking for an example name of someone who would be put in trouble so they could negotiate over further redacting the documents to protect such people, the US responded stating they wont negotiate over it and to hand it all back.
If anyone is at risk over this the blame falls entirely on the US government, they had the option to ensure the leaks damaged only reputation but not put people in danger and they refused to accept it.
Like what? You still have the freedom to do anything you need, it's not like you're limited as to what you can paint.
It's not as rich as say, WPF, but that's because it's not designed to be, it was always designed to be a base forms library, and as long as you can paint what you want and handle pretty much any event you need to in a custom control, which you can, then there's really no limit.
WPF is Microsoft's updated implementation for UI work, but it's far more complex, and far less lightweight. What limitations are you suggesting exist for WinForms? what sort of control that's standard to a Windows application UI do you seem to believe can't be created with it because of these limitations?
This is just silly, any control library can't do things that it doesn't implement by default by the very definition of that concept.
It's not like it's hard to extend Windows forms to do the things you want if you want to do things out of the ordinary, if you want selectable labels stick a textbox on, borderstyle none, backcolor control and readonly true. Not exactly difficult.
Windows forms provide all you need to implement a standard Windows user interface though, things like coloured tabs, vertical progress bars, selectable labels aren't standard Windows user interface components so break the rules of good user interface design in ensuring a UI is familiar. Why would Microsoft implement things in their basic Windows forms library that go against standard UI components that the end user is used to? It's not like they prevent you implementing that if you really want to.
It sounds more like you're just not very experienced in UI design and Windows Forms.
Look at the distances again- the Apache was at ~1.3km, the maximum range of the RPG-7 before detonation is ~920m, so even as a flak weapon it would be completely and utterly useless.
"The last release was marketed as definitive proof that the US military actively practiced murder. The big "bombshell" was a video in which people on the ground have clearly visible rifles. Then it appears one peeks around the corner with an RPG and points it at a US helicopter."
You haven't actually watched the video have you? A couple have rifles or so - that's maybe two out of 13 armed which, in a place like Iraq during this period wasn't unusual and is absolutely not evidence of them being a threat- many armed civilians in Iraq were actually on side with coalition troops. There is absolutely no RPG, just a camera, and even if there was the idea that it was being aimed at the US helicopter makes no sense- I don't think you quite grasp the kind of range Apaches sit at in this kind of confrontation and the fact that an RPG against an Apache would be entirely ineffective at this range- the people being watched were probably not even aware the Apache was there and watching them. In fact, it's even visible in the video itself- you can see quite clearly on the Apache's FLIR display that it's sat at a range of ~1.3 kilometres, an RPG-7 has an effective range of no more than 920m, and according to Wikipedia has a hit probability of a mere 4% at even 500m.
Certainly the shooting of the van can be labelled as nothing less than random murder, there's no other description for firing upon unarmed civilians without good cause, there was simply no reason to engage whatsoever, at absolute minimum the pilots should have observed to ensure there was a clear threat for much longer- they fired without any confirmation there was a actually a real viable threat.
Or alternatively, put international pressure on China to use it's oppression of citizens to prevent the purchase of Rhino horns from poachers in the first place.
If China is going to oppress it's citizens, it could at least do it for a good cause!
But that's a completely different argument, his point is that C++ extends the C syntax and rules pretty consistently, whilst Objective-C does not, it changes them.
The complexity of C++ stems not from the syntax per-se, but simply because you can do that much more with it- not only have you got namespaces for better code organisation in large projects, not only have you got tools such as operator overloading, true multiple inheritance, but you also have options such as template meta-programming.
You found C++ harder simply because it has more features, and more complex features to learn, not because of it's syntax. C++'s complexity stems purely from it's power, Objective-C's complexity stems from it's obscure syntax- the former is the price you pay for extra features, the latter is just simply inexcusable difference for the sake of difference and/or poor language design.
C++'s syntax change complexity is purely down to the amount of syntax that is required to implement such a rich set of features. If you base your argument purely on syntax without any consideration of why that additional syntax is there and without any consideration of language changes then you might as well just argue Java trumps them both because it's much closer to C syntactically than either of them, but that would be ignorant of the fact Java offers a completely different featureset again.
Perhaps the most obvious test though is this, write an application that's not overly complex and uses the base set of shared features the languages provide using their preferred syntax (rather than the fact you can just use C for either) and which then more closely represents a C program syntactically? you really can't argue it's anything other than C++, which is precisely why the jump to C++ is much more natural than to Objective-C as per the GP's argument.
I agree it's not a big barrier, it's just an unnecessary inconvenience, that's the problem. I think the inconvenience alone puts a lot of people off of it because there are so many other languages out there that don't have that inconvenience for them.
To be fair it's not that there's any inherent problem with Objective-C, that much is pretty well demonstrated by the countless great applications built on it for Apple's platforms. The real issue is really that it's like the neanderthal of languages- it evolved from C in parallel with languages like C++ and Java, but in doing so has ended up rather more ugly, and whilst it has some good bits, it also has bad bits like a lack of namespaces and operator overloading (although of course these issues aren't limited to Objective-C, Java lacks operator overloading too for example) but the combination of what is frankly a quite horrible syntax and these missing features means it's essentially just a poor man's C++. The obscurity of the syntax just builds an extra barrier that's really unnecessary in this day and age- every developer just about is comfortable with C++ style syntax so why waste time with a language syntax that's so obscure when you can just have one that people can jump straight into? This issue spills over into cross platform development somewhat in that it's much more of a headache to development multiple versions of a program when you're facing two very different sets of syntax more so than porting between programs with similar syntax.
So yeah, certainly it "works", but there's really just no point in it when other languages work just as well without the added headache of lack of things like namespaces and an obscure syntax. There are bigger issues with the development tools and libraries themselves, but really that's something else, my comment was really targetted at the language- effectively Objective-C is different without bringing anything worthwhile to the table- at least with some other languages that have more obscure syntax they also often have a redeeming feature, like say being a functional programming language for example.
Slashdot Mirror
"If they've copied things like graphics from the original game, then that is almost certainly a violation of copyright."
Which they pretty much have, hence why I made the comments I did. If it was a fringe case, I'd instead be encouraging him to look into fighting it, but as it's such a close clone I think he'd be stupid to do so.
"For example, storylines are not inherently subject to copyright"
Meh, perhaps I wasn't clear enough. If you copy the storyline including character names, settings and so forth then they certainly are, but if you're talking about rough outline of the story then you're right. I was referring to the former case.
"Having actually studied copyright law, I have to say it's not so clear as you make it out to be."
In a case like this, where he's basically copied the art and taken a large portion of the name, yes, it really is.
"See, now here is an interesting question. How close does a copy have to be to be a copy?"
Agreed, it's a fair question, but in this case it's relevant, the clone is so close there really isn't any room for that argument.
"Again, I think the issues are more complicated than you think they are."
In general yes, in this case no.
"Yeah, you might want to take your own advice."
Apparently you completely and utterly missed the text in brackets.
If you really think the best thing he can do is to fight it, why not put your money where you mouth is and offer to help fund his costs in exchange for a return of the money plus a little bit extra for helping? Or are you merely advising someone else gamble their money without being willing to put your money where your mouth is?
Look your points make for great debate in the general case of creating clones, but in this case the clone is so close to the original that there's really no debate to be had over it, and he'd get destroyed in court. If he'd made a clone without the use of "Pac", with different characters and stuff and it had happened then fine, I'd agree it's worth fighting, but in this particular case it's fucking stupid to do so or to suggest he really has a chance in hell of succeding in a battle against Namco over it if they're determined not to allow such close clones of their IP.
"However, copying the "look and feel" of a game using different code and different art, is not copyright infringement."
No, this is completely wrong. If you copy the characters- i.e. Pacman, then it IS copyright infringement, that is Namco's IP.
What you're thinking of is gameplay- that's something you can copy. You absolutely can create a game where you go round a maze collecting things whilst being chased by enemies, that's no problem, but copying the fundamental IP such as the characters or the storyline is a problem. That's why this is copyright infringement.
Yes it is a copyright violation.
It's a copyright violation because he hasn't simply copied the game concept, but has largely copied the art and the name too. It would be allowed for example to create a Pacman clone, make the Pacman character green, maybe give him some red eyes or something, replace the power pills with energy drinks and replace the ghosts with aliens, then call the game "Green Gobbler" or whatever- this wouldn't be a copyright violation, but to outright copy what pacman is and is about- a yellow circle with a mouth chasing ghosts and then also putting Pac in the name absolutely is a blatant copyright violation.
I speak from experience having research it extensively before after having been in precisely this situation. Many many years ago, I worked on a clone of Teamfortress and after Valve aquired it and the IP they requested a shutdown of our mod- they had every right to do this because we hadn't simply copied the Fortress section of the name, but we had copied the class names and so forth too even though the artwork was original- we had copied the fundamental IP. We could get round this by simply changing some class names, and changing the mod name to remove Fortress, this was enough to satisfy Valve themselves even, but the fundamental point is if you're going to copy not just the concept, but the fundamental IP as well (i.e. characters, story, that sort of thing) then yes, it absolutely is a copyright violation.
You may not think it should be a copyright violation, but you're completely wrong to suggest that it is not. This is why people usually put IANAL in there post (IANAL btw!) because they know full well they're simply stating what they think may be true, but which possibly is not. Your advice is dangerous because you're telling him to fight against legal notice which he almost certainly has no chance of succeeding with and if he does take it all the way to court, it would probably destroy him as he really does not have a leg to stand on.
So to the person asking the original question in the summary- if you want to know what you did wrong theres your answer. The worst thing you can do is fight this, because legally, you seem to be completely in the wrong, and will hence almost certainly lose. There is no DCMA abuse here, beyond the fact that the DMCA is inherently abusive in it's very existence.
Except, having browsed the web for about 16 years now on Windows, and have never ever managed to do that. I guess unless you have some kind of mental condition that forces you to click every link you come across rather than just clicking on what you want and trust it's about as likely as winning the lottery. In fact, despite having worked in IT support in the past for some years and having worked alongside IT as a developer for even more years, I don't think I've ever once encountered a case of someone being infected by a drive-by on Windows (or any OS for that matter).
Besides, it's not like an Acrobat bug is a Windows bug, and it's not like software bugs in plugins and browsers don't exist on other platforms- MacOS X, iOS, and Linux have all had such vulnerabilities too:
http://www.pcadvisor.co.uk/news/index.cfm?newsid=3249447
In fact, other OS' have often been first to fall to such exploits at hacking contests:
http://www.channelregister.co.uk/2008/03/28/mac_hack/
The gap between theoretical attack vectors and actual attack vectors seems pretty large- to date I suspect far far more infections occur as a result of infected e-mail attachments/memory stick transfers, or people downloading and then executing something they think they trust from phishing sites and whatnot despite these problems being as old as the internet themselves.
"I can't help but cry bullshit to all of this WikiLeaks mess. I have difficulty believing the US government is unable to bring WikiLeaks down, either notoriously or covertly."
I think you'd be suprised, Assange has spoken briefly in the past of Australian intelligence sources giving him warnings, but interestingly right now he's in the UK and yet we've not followed through on the international arrest warrant for him.
I suspect he's actually got as much support amongst intelligence agencies as he has detractors. After the Lugovoi incident in London I'm sure MI5 would love nothing more than to prevent and capture a Russian assassin active on British territory.
Keep in mind that British foreign intelligence- MI6 had a list of their operatives leaked some years back, and the US was the first country to defend publication of the leak citing constitutional protections etc. and in that case there was equally a risk of lives in danger. This coupled with the fact Wikileaks may have contacts or information that even the security services haven't been able to acquire yet.
There's many reasons why Assage might well have just as many people in the security services on side as against him- if Wikileaks hasn't really done much serious to harm British interests, and if he has information that's important about say, Russian interests, and if he's the perfect honeypot for luring in foreign agents who may wish to spy on him or attempt assassination, then they may believe he is a rather valuable asset to keep around, at least for now.
We've had Russian assassinations on British soil, but then we never really believed the Russians were our friends in the first place. A US assassination on British soil? murder of someone on the sovereign land of their closest ally? Now that would be devastating for the US' position in the world, and would almost certainly do far more harm than any leaks have managed. The US (or Russia for that matter) getting rid of him might not be as easy as you think.
I wouldn't use their cloud platform anyway.
They had Black Friday deals in the UK all last week and had extremely limited numbers of stock, but rather than do things first come first served, they had an unstable platform on which to run it which repeatedly threw back 503 errors due to the load, meaning those that got processed weren't necessarily in order (i.e. 200 get through, 200 rejected, 200 through or whatever load it was taking).
If they can't even scale their own services on their platform, what hope is there for anyone else being able to rely on them? It's not like they haven't had problems either:
http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2007/10/02/amazon-ec2-outage-wipes-out-data/
http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/more_amazon_s3_downtime.php
Trusting Amazon as a hosting platform at least is foolish anyway.
Seeing as she survived despite being posted thousands of miles from home in a warzone that put her in range of a heavily hostile nation equipped with air launched and land launched anti-ship missiles twice (Falklands, Iraq) I'd say the name turned out pretty well for her!
"The problem with people like Julian Assange is that he is fixated on America, when most of the rest of us are more concerned with where our next meal will come from or whether a family member or loved one will be there tomorrow for standing up for those things that are truly important."
Do you not realise the irony of this in relation to your comment you don't have a US centric view of things? Have you forgotten how many non-US leaks there were prior to the recent ones? Just because the US happened to be the source of the largest, most prominent leaks does not mean there is a fixation on the US. Why do you have that view? precisely because you have such a US centric view of the world- you think it's all about the US.
"If the US is corrupt and hypocritical as you suggest, it is not because of their leaders but their culture is that way. Their leaders are just a reflection of their people and there fore all of the leaks by Julian Assange will not change that. Those leaks, on the other hand have the real potential to disrupt the lives of the rest of us."
It doesn't matter if it's the politicians or the people, the US needs to change, and all other methods of trying to demonstrate this to them have failed. Will such drastic action as this work? probably not, but people aren't just going to roll over and continue to let the US commit abuses all over the world so if they're not going to change, they'll have to continue to suffer this sort of embarassment- it's entirely their choice.
"However, most believe that is not the case and things will escalate, in which case, the leaks are more likely to produce harm and a negative "what if" is the more likely scenario."
Most believe? really? I suggest most don't. The only real noise suggesting it will make things worse has come from US government itself and US conservative commentators. Meanwhile, in the rest of the world, "most" don't seem to believe things will be worse. North Korea is on the brink of war before the leaks even started after it shelled South Korea and intelligence reports suggest it plans to go further, a response to which South Korea stated would be targetted missile strikes. It really cannot get much worse there. Sorry but your theory that most people think it will get worse, and hence, that is the most likely scenario is completely and utterly unsubstantiated.
"Outside the US, there is not a lot of trust of the US. These leaks flame that distrust. More distrust means more unrest and less cooperation. Now, not only is the US involved, but other countries are too. For instance, the people of Yemen are anti-US. The government of Yemen has secretly been helping the US in fighting terrorism."
Indeed, and why do you think there is so much distrust of the US? precisely because it has been doing everything from spying at the UN which is a gross breach of international trust, through to carrying out covert attacks on sovereign nations. What do you think will increase trust in the US more, continuation of these things, or the US stopping to think about the consequences of it's actions and standing down from such things a bit more? Distrust in the US exists precisely because of things like extraordinary rendition, performed and uncovered well before the Wikileaks leaks- distrust in the US exists precisely because it's lack of transparency, it's theory that it can do what it wants regardless of what the rest of the world thinks.
"Now, that the news is out, will people in Yemen be as supportive of their leaders? Will it fuel the opposition party? If it fuels it enough, will there be a change in leadership and will that change in leadership be as supportive of US policy in the area? You can hope that it would all be for the good, but you would most likely be wrong. The action of releasing the Yemen documents will have negative consequences. The same is true for most of the others."
It depends, if the US continues to act in a way in which it upsets the citizens of these countries, then yes things will get worse, if the US instead learns it's lesson and steps back from such actions then things will improve.
You clearly have a horrendously US centric view of the world, so here's a thought excercise for you. You're implying that the US should be able to carry out covert strikes in Yemen, because if they weren't covert there would be uproar amongst the population of that country, what justification do you believe exists for US priorities in Yemen to be over and above the will of the population? Turn it around and think about it- if you found out the Yemeni government had been carrying out covert killings of American citizens on US soil, would your reaction really be "Oh well that's okay, they're only doing what they think is right for the world- it doesn't matter that they just blew up someone I went to school with, they know best!"? That's the reaction you're expecting the Yemeni people to have. One might have thought 9/11 was a wake up call for the US, in that it happened because a bunch of Muslims were kind of fucked off that the US had spent the last few decades using their country as a playground with the Russians- it's a shame people like yourself recognise actions have consequences, but are completely and utterly blind to the fact that those consequences only occur because of previous US actions.
Your world view simple seems just so utterly naive and US-centric, that you think it's okay that the US should be able to covertly assassinate citizens of a foreign state in their own soil, and you think that it'
No, I'm saying using a "what if" as a premise for an argument when there is an equal and opposite "what if" that perfectly counterbalances that argument then that argument is pointless because it only shows half the picture.
Your suggestion was that the leaks will make things worse, but you simply do not know that, they could equally make things better.
No, his job, is to leak materials, that's what Wikileaks is about. Only the US government is claiming people are at threat- how do you know in your example the guy even has family in Iran who are at threat? It's for the US to tell Wikileaks which reports represent a threat to life if they are to make such a claim in the first place- if they make that claim, and have the opportunity to save lives, but do not take it, then they are at fault.
But what if tensions in the middle east are resolved? what if Iran stands down now that it knows it's neighbours want it destroyed when it believed it's threat was from the US who has in fact been resisting attempts? What if North Korea stands down because it now knows China isn't quite the ally it thought it was?
You can't push "what if" scenarios, because you can equally say well what if a continuation of lack of openness makes the world worse? "What if" works both ways, it's stupid to use that argument for not doing something.
So like I said, why did the US refuse to point out any information that should be redacted when it had the opportunity too? Either it doesn't care about the threat, or the threat is not substantial.
It doesn't matter what's contained, the point is that if there really is any danger to anyone, then the US refused to aid wikileaks in redacting it when they had the opportunity choosing instead to let them push ahead with full disclosure.
Wikileaks isn't putting anyone at risk, when the US government put this charge forward to Wikileaks, Assange responded asking for an example name of someone who would be put in trouble so they could negotiate over further redacting the documents to protect such people, the US responded stating they wont negotiate over it and to hand it all back.
If anyone is at risk over this the blame falls entirely on the US government, they had the option to ensure the leaks damaged only reputation but not put people in danger and they refused to accept it.
Like what? You still have the freedom to do anything you need, it's not like you're limited as to what you can paint.
It's not as rich as say, WPF, but that's because it's not designed to be, it was always designed to be a base forms library, and as long as you can paint what you want and handle pretty much any event you need to in a custom control, which you can, then there's really no limit.
WPF is Microsoft's updated implementation for UI work, but it's far more complex, and far less lightweight. What limitations are you suggesting exist for WinForms? what sort of control that's standard to a Windows application UI do you seem to believe can't be created with it because of these limitations?
This is just silly, any control library can't do things that it doesn't implement by default by the very definition of that concept.
It's not like it's hard to extend Windows forms to do the things you want if you want to do things out of the ordinary, if you want selectable labels stick a textbox on, borderstyle none, backcolor control and readonly true. Not exactly difficult.
Windows forms provide all you need to implement a standard Windows user interface though, things like coloured tabs, vertical progress bars, selectable labels aren't standard Windows user interface components so break the rules of good user interface design in ensuring a UI is familiar. Why would Microsoft implement things in their basic Windows forms library that go against standard UI components that the end user is used to? It's not like they prevent you implementing that if you really want to.
It sounds more like you're just not very experienced in UI design and Windows Forms.
Look at the distances again- the Apache was at ~1.3km, the maximum range of the RPG-7 before detonation is ~920m, so even as a flak weapon it would be completely and utterly useless.
"The last release was marketed as definitive proof that the US military actively practiced murder. The big "bombshell" was a video in which people on the ground have clearly visible rifles. Then it appears one peeks around the corner with an RPG and points it at a US helicopter."
You haven't actually watched the video have you? A couple have rifles or so - that's maybe two out of 13 armed which, in a place like Iraq during this period wasn't unusual and is absolutely not evidence of them being a threat- many armed civilians in Iraq were actually on side with coalition troops. There is absolutely no RPG, just a camera, and even if there was the idea that it was being aimed at the US helicopter makes no sense- I don't think you quite grasp the kind of range Apaches sit at in this kind of confrontation and the fact that an RPG against an Apache would be entirely ineffective at this range- the people being watched were probably not even aware the Apache was there and watching them. In fact, it's even visible in the video itself- you can see quite clearly on the Apache's FLIR display that it's sat at a range of ~1.3 kilometres, an RPG-7 has an effective range of no more than 920m, and according to Wikipedia has a hit probability of a mere 4% at even 500m.
Certainly the shooting of the van can be labelled as nothing less than random murder, there's no other description for firing upon unarmed civilians without good cause, there was simply no reason to engage whatsoever, at absolute minimum the pilots should have observed to ensure there was a clear threat for much longer- they fired without any confirmation there was a actually a real viable threat.
Because then it's hardware and software independent.
Want to know how that proprietary controller communicates with that proprietary console? simple. A windows driver wont always exist.
Or alternatively, put international pressure on China to use it's oppression of citizens to prevent the purchase of Rhino horns from poachers in the first place.
If China is going to oppress it's citizens, it could at least do it for a good cause!
To target Rhino poachers? Are we talking Hellfire armed Reapers here?
That's one way to deal with the problem I suppose.
But that's a completely different argument, his point is that C++ extends the C syntax and rules pretty consistently, whilst Objective-C does not, it changes them.
The complexity of C++ stems not from the syntax per-se, but simply because you can do that much more with it- not only have you got namespaces for better code organisation in large projects, not only have you got tools such as operator overloading, true multiple inheritance, but you also have options such as template meta-programming.
You found C++ harder simply because it has more features, and more complex features to learn, not because of it's syntax. C++'s complexity stems purely from it's power, Objective-C's complexity stems from it's obscure syntax- the former is the price you pay for extra features, the latter is just simply inexcusable difference for the sake of difference and/or poor language design.
C++'s syntax change complexity is purely down to the amount of syntax that is required to implement such a rich set of features. If you base your argument purely on syntax without any consideration of why that additional syntax is there and without any consideration of language changes then you might as well just argue Java trumps them both because it's much closer to C syntactically than either of them, but that would be ignorant of the fact Java offers a completely different featureset again.
Perhaps the most obvious test though is this, write an application that's not overly complex and uses the base set of shared features the languages provide using their preferred syntax (rather than the fact you can just use C for either) and which then more closely represents a C program syntactically? you really can't argue it's anything other than C++, which is precisely why the jump to C++ is much more natural than to Objective-C as per the GP's argument.
I agree it's not a big barrier, it's just an unnecessary inconvenience, that's the problem. I think the inconvenience alone puts a lot of people off of it because there are so many other languages out there that don't have that inconvenience for them.
To be fair it's not that there's any inherent problem with Objective-C, that much is pretty well demonstrated by the countless great applications built on it for Apple's platforms. The real issue is really that it's like the neanderthal of languages- it evolved from C in parallel with languages like C++ and Java, but in doing so has ended up rather more ugly, and whilst it has some good bits, it also has bad bits like a lack of namespaces and operator overloading (although of course these issues aren't limited to Objective-C, Java lacks operator overloading too for example) but the combination of what is frankly a quite horrible syntax and these missing features means it's essentially just a poor man's C++. The obscurity of the syntax just builds an extra barrier that's really unnecessary in this day and age- every developer just about is comfortable with C++ style syntax so why waste time with a language syntax that's so obscure when you can just have one that people can jump straight into? This issue spills over into cross platform development somewhat in that it's much more of a headache to development multiple versions of a program when you're facing two very different sets of syntax more so than porting between programs with similar syntax.
So yeah, certainly it "works", but there's really just no point in it when other languages work just as well without the added headache of lack of things like namespaces and an obscure syntax. There are bigger issues with the development tools and libraries themselves, but really that's something else, my comment was really targetted at the language- effectively Objective-C is different without bringing anything worthwhile to the table- at least with some other languages that have more obscure syntax they also often have a redeeming feature, like say being a functional programming language for example.