I think it's a little bit naive to expect one branch of a multi-national corporation to talk very well with another.
When one branch of that multinational corporation is making discs specifically designed to play in another branch's hardware, then no, I don't think that's a little bit naive whatsoever. I don't expect the computer division to hit up the TV stand division about every little thing, but it seems like "we're making a new type of DVD, so let's call up the guys who make the DVD players and make sure nothing broke" is a thought that should have occured to someone.
Far Cry has great AI. I don't remember ever going "zomfg the computar is thinking!!!", but the enemies respond in a sensible, coordinated manner -- sweeping areas where disturbances are heard, covering each other, and using weapons intelligently. Far superior to Half-Life (and, credit where credit is due, several years after Half-Life), but also in a much more open-ended game world, where the mobs don't just have to navigate a room full of crates.
The really sad part was when, halfway through the game, they switched from "smart" soldiers, to Doom-esque mutants who just ran straight at you. Ruined that game for me.
I just thought it was interesting how Slashdot turned into the champion of narrowly defined copyright law in this particular case
The GPL is built on copyright law, and that's about the most sacred thing going around here. Slashdot as a whole seems to be all for copyright law as long as it's not being used as a bludgeon to prevent folks from doing completely reasonable things. Seems like a pragmatic nerd stance to me, and in keeping with the general audience of the site.
As far as Google being similar to this case, I just flat-out disagree with you there. I think Google takes copyright holders for a ride sometimes, claiming Fair Use when they shouldn't, but I don't think their web search is an example of that at all. Book search? Yeah, maybe.
The situation in which design and content are licensed rather than published directly is no different. In both cases the copyright holder has elected to allow the publishing of that media in a public broadcast medium with no access controls, which has nothing to do with the Turnitin situation, wherein papers are given directly to professors with no agreement for distribution beyond the professor to occur.
As far as Turnitin not giving "open access", there's really no way to guarantee that will never happen, including in the worst case: they go bankrupt and sell that huge database of papers to some even less scrupulous entity. If they have some sort of legal guarantee in place to prevent that from happening, I'll stand corrected.
Google indexes content that has been made publicly available. They don't guess passwords or "hack" their way into anything. They don't compel you to make your files available to them. They take content that you have freely put on the web, already accessible to anyone, and they index it. If, for some reason, you make content publicly available that you don't want the public to know about, then they give you an easy technical way of opting out.
You could use the whole walking into a house because the door is open argument, but IMHO that doesn't hold water when you're talking about the web, which is explicitly designed as a broadcast medium, versus somebody's house, which is pretty obviously private.
Turnitin takes content that you had to turn into your prof to get course credit, but quite possibly didn't want anyone else to access -- or maybe you don't care, the problem is they don't ask -- and uses that content to make their profit without your consent. You didn't put your content up in your university's quad or otherwise make it available to the world at large. You gave it to your professor specifically so you could be graded.
My RSS reader has been lighting up with posts about this, and I was thinking threatening emails or phone calls with people saying specifically they were going to kill this chick. Maybe throwing in some personal details that show that the person isn't just a random bored 14 year old fucking with her. You know, stuff that normal people would consider actually calling the cops over. Finally, I read her post and it's nothing like that.
Look, it's the internet. If people haven't said they'd like to see you dead, or made some kind of artist's rendering of your demise, you just haven't been around long enough.
Is it cool? No. Is it worth "alerting teh internets", calling the cops, and being afraid to leave your yard? Fuck no. This almost reeks of publicity stunt, but I don't know anything about her, so I couldn't say for sure.
If this is what happens when a couple of bloggers (who apparently she doesn't like either) screw with her a little, I wonder what would happen if 4chan got ahold of her for some laughs? I'm sorry, but if you can't handle that stuff, you need to get off the net.
With as many people online as there are, some of them are bound to be assholes. If you can't square with that, you should stick to meatspace.
Do any of you actually spend time in Second Life? I'm not talking just popping in and poking around once in a while (I've done that), I mean you spend significant amounts of time in the world, you've actually invested some time and energy into making your character your own, and maybe you even develop content for it. I'm more interested in people who are more into the actual enjoyment of the world rather than speculators or people strictly trying to sell their wares.
The reason I ask is because so many companies seem to be on the bandwagon of this thing, but my friends are almost uniformly tech savvy early adopters and I don't know anybody who's ever logged into it other than to check it out and laugh at it. I've got nothing against it, and if anybody uses it I'm not going to laugh at you or anything. I may not see the appeal, but I don't see the appeal of a lot of things the average person likes. I just haven't seen anybody else who really likes it either, and that's made me question its popularity other than as a kind of inside joke.
I do think it's a great concept, and I'm sure true virtual worlds will be all the rage someday. I'm just suspicious that anybody actually sees this as a good enough implementation to really start spending time there. I've heard the furry community has taken up residence there to some extent, but honestly when I log in I hardly see any concentration of people anywhere, furry or not.
Sinbad isn't funny... at all, but he was a pretty good sport about this. You'd think, "Hey, why shouldn't he be? It's kind of funny, and he's a comedian," but given previous people's reactions to Wikipedia innacuracies, I'd say this is deserving of at least a nod.
Cheers to you Sinbad. You still suck, but you have my respect.
True that. We prefer securing our computers, network, and user account as opposed to treating our coworkers like children -- though, admittedly, sometimes they ask for it.
Insofar as outdated, unjust laws and inept government employees with far too much access to unsecured computers and networks are the fault of P2P, I suppose the patent office is on to something.
To be fair, when I mount an SMB share from an XP machine on my PowerBook (running Tiger) at home, then close the lid and take it to work without unmounting, the whole OS shits a brick for about 5 mins if I try to do anything with the Finder.
It's arguments like this that make fundamentalist Christians think the theory of evolution is a satanic plot to corrupt our children and turn them into terrorists.
What a coincidence. Fundamentalist Christians and people who don't watch where they're going when they're crossing the street: two groups I would happily sweep into the skimmer of the ol' gene pool.
If they'd both have a problem with the idea, it must be good.
I've used namecheap.com for the last couple domains I registered. They seem to be good enough I used to use GoDaddy, but some of the things in their ToS annoyed me. Anyway, namecheap.com has been perfectly suitable, has a sane control panel, costs just south of $9/year, and they don't charge you extra to keep your WHOIS data masked if that's what you want.
Seriously, I'm not trying to be a troll. I love Linux, but if you don't really know your way around a computer or have a buddy (or a LUG) around to help you, it's probably not the best option. Still.
Of course, Windows isn't really either, but at least the Dell folks in Dubai or wherever will suck up to you when something breaks.
Slashdot Mirror
Are you kidding? Not only is legalized prostitution very popular with lawmakers, they're also its most proficient practitioners.
When one branch of that multinational corporation is making discs specifically designed to play in another branch's hardware, then no, I don't think that's a little bit naive whatsoever. I don't expect the computer division to hit up the TV stand division about every little thing, but it seems like "we're making a new type of DVD, so let's call up the guys who make the DVD players and make sure nothing broke" is a thought that should have occured to someone.
Theo telling somebody else to watch what they say and to whom they say it? Maybe when he learns to take his own advice he'll be less of a joke.
Far Cry has great AI. I don't remember ever going "zomfg the computar is thinking!!!", but the enemies respond in a sensible, coordinated manner -- sweeping areas where disturbances are heard, covering each other, and using weapons intelligently. Far superior to Half-Life (and, credit where credit is due, several years after Half-Life), but also in a much more open-ended game world, where the mobs don't just have to navigate a room full of crates.
The really sad part was when, halfway through the game, they switched from "smart" soldiers, to Doom-esque mutants who just ran straight at you. Ruined that game for me.
The GPL is built on copyright law, and that's about the most sacred thing going around here. Slashdot as a whole seems to be all for copyright law as long as it's not being used as a bludgeon to prevent folks from doing completely reasonable things. Seems like a pragmatic nerd stance to me, and in keeping with the general audience of the site.
As far as Google being similar to this case, I just flat-out disagree with you there. I think Google takes copyright holders for a ride sometimes, claiming Fair Use when they shouldn't, but I don't think their web search is an example of that at all. Book search? Yeah, maybe.
The situation in which design and content are licensed rather than published directly is no different. In both cases the copyright holder has elected to allow the publishing of that media in a public broadcast medium with no access controls, which has nothing to do with the Turnitin situation, wherein papers are given directly to professors with no agreement for distribution beyond the professor to occur.
As far as Turnitin not giving "open access", there's really no way to guarantee that will never happen, including in the worst case: they go bankrupt and sell that huge database of papers to some even less scrupulous entity. If they have some sort of legal guarantee in place to prevent that from happening, I'll stand corrected.
Google indexes content that has been made publicly available. They don't guess passwords or "hack" their way into anything. They don't compel you to make your files available to them. They take content that you have freely put on the web, already accessible to anyone, and they index it. If, for some reason, you make content publicly available that you don't want the public to know about, then they give you an easy technical way of opting out.
You could use the whole walking into a house because the door is open argument, but IMHO that doesn't hold water when you're talking about the web, which is explicitly designed as a broadcast medium, versus somebody's house, which is pretty obviously private.
Turnitin takes content that you had to turn into your prof to get course credit, but quite possibly didn't want anyone else to access -- or maybe you don't care, the problem is they don't ask -- and uses that content to make their profit without your consent. You didn't put your content up in your university's quad or otherwise make it available to the world at large. You gave it to your professor specifically so you could be graded.
Completely different situation.
My RSS reader has been lighting up with posts about this, and I was thinking threatening emails or phone calls with people saying specifically they were going to kill this chick. Maybe throwing in some personal details that show that the person isn't just a random bored 14 year old fucking with her. You know, stuff that normal people would consider actually calling the cops over. Finally, I read her post and it's nothing like that.
Look, it's the internet. If people haven't said they'd like to see you dead, or made some kind of artist's rendering of your demise, you just haven't been around long enough.
Is it cool? No. Is it worth "alerting teh internets", calling the cops, and being afraid to leave your yard? Fuck no. This almost reeks of publicity stunt, but I don't know anything about her, so I couldn't say for sure.
If this is what happens when a couple of bloggers (who apparently she doesn't like either) screw with her a little, I wonder what would happen if 4chan got ahold of her for some laughs? I'm sorry, but if you can't handle that stuff, you need to get off the net.
With as many people online as there are, some of them are bound to be assholes. If you can't square with that, you should stick to meatspace.
Do any of you actually spend time in Second Life? I'm not talking just popping in and poking around once in a while (I've done that), I mean you spend significant amounts of time in the world, you've actually invested some time and energy into making your character your own, and maybe you even develop content for it. I'm more interested in people who are more into the actual enjoyment of the world rather than speculators or people strictly trying to sell their wares.
The reason I ask is because so many companies seem to be on the bandwagon of this thing, but my friends are almost uniformly tech savvy early adopters and I don't know anybody who's ever logged into it other than to check it out and laugh at it. I've got nothing against it, and if anybody uses it I'm not going to laugh at you or anything. I may not see the appeal, but I don't see the appeal of a lot of things the average person likes. I just haven't seen anybody else who really likes it either, and that's made me question its popularity other than as a kind of inside joke.
I do think it's a great concept, and I'm sure true virtual worlds will be all the rage someday. I'm just suspicious that anybody actually sees this as a good enough implementation to really start spending time there. I've heard the furry community has taken up residence there to some extent, but honestly when I log in I hardly see any concentration of people anywhere, furry or not.
Sinbad isn't funny... at all, but he was a pretty good sport about this. You'd think, "Hey, why shouldn't he be? It's kind of funny, and he's a comedian," but given previous people's reactions to Wikipedia innacuracies, I'd say this is deserving of at least a nod.
Cheers to you Sinbad. You still suck, but you have my respect.
True that. We prefer securing our computers, network, and user account as opposed to treating our coworkers like children -- though, admittedly, sometimes they ask for it.
Insofar as outdated, unjust laws and inept government employees with far too much access to unsecured computers and networks are the fault of P2P, I suppose the patent office is on to something.
+1 accurate description of extreme programming
So that means the games won't be...
Oh... really? Still $60?
Nevermind.
First one of these I've gotten a laugh out of in a while. Well done.
http://www.alistapart.com/articles/boom describes how they handled that stuff using CSS2 and proposed CSS3 features.
I'm not writing a book any time soon, and if I were I wouldn't take this approach, but it is an interesting read.
http://despair.com/meetings.html
I gotta admit, I would watch that. It would never fly on TV, but you could do whatever the hip term for a video podcast is.
I'll agree with you there.
To be fair, when I mount an SMB share from an XP machine on my PowerBook (running Tiger) at home, then close the lid and take it to work without unmounting, the whole OS shits a brick for about 5 mins if I try to do anything with the Finder.
In before 640K jokes.
I'm going to need enough popcorn to last... March.
"Hey Mr. Lawyer Man. I'm an H1-B worker, and I was wondering if I can start some sort of company here in the US?"
Easy enough. Should take about five minutes and a couple hundred dollars. Fucking lawyers.
What a coincidence. Fundamentalist Christians and people who don't watch where they're going when they're crossing the street: two groups I would happily sweep into the skimmer of the ol' gene pool.
If they'd both have a problem with the idea, it must be good.
I've used namecheap.com for the last couple domains I registered. They seem to be good enough I used to use GoDaddy, but some of the things in their ToS annoyed me. Anyway, namecheap.com has been perfectly suitable, has a sane control panel, costs just south of $9/year, and they don't charge you extra to keep your WHOIS data masked if that's what you want.
Seriously, I'm not trying to be a troll. I love Linux, but if you don't really know your way around a computer or have a buddy (or a LUG) around to help you, it's probably not the best option. Still.
Of course, Windows isn't really either, but at least the Dell folks in Dubai or wherever will suck up to you when something breaks.