No, the coupon is what happened when micrsoft lost a court case that proved people were actually HARMED and incurred financial losses. What COST did WGA bring to you? (and system crashes don't count, those are already excluded from warranty in the EULA).
Worse, the class action is merely a privacy issue, not anything that woul dhave actually been validatible by any real damages or bunsiness impact. WGA didn't COST anyone anything other than a few minutes of their time to implement the patch that added it. Even if the OS crashed or had issues because of it, or simply due to the reboot, is irrelevent due to the "no warranty extressed or implied" regarding the software as spelled out in the EULA.
At best, micsorsoft might have been forced to remove this feature, and might have paid some big fine to the government and covered some laywer (massive) expenses and fees, but judging from the whopping $16 each plantifs got in the last successful anti-M$ case, which WAS backed by damages (inflated pricing due to anti-competitive moves), what did these people expect to get, $1 each if they were lucky? if the case continues either way, the removal of WGA is still possible, so all we're loosing a 100 million people geting $1 each, after spending $3 in paperwork processing and a lot of time to get it.
Also, the question if WGA is even an invasion of privacy liekly will not even hold up in court. The activiation itself does NOT require registration, and only collects basic information about your machine IDs, IPs, etc, not much different from what any website could collect, and far LESS information that is sent to M$ each time you have a crash and let it report the issue. I think M$ might actually WIN this case. (though I'm hoping they don't).
We swap every 30 days, with a 10 character minimum that must include at least 1 capitol letter, at least 1 special character, at least 1 digit, can't be similar to your name, ID, or the last 12 passwords used, can't be a password used in the last 365 days, and it patched against a dictionary of thousands of words and hundreds of common passwords.
I'll pick 3 or 4 in a row before it even lets me keep one. It's a big PITA. More so that once I change the default password (which effects multiple systems) I still have to manually change the password in several other apps to match, and I've got about 2 minutes to change it in my PDA before it tries the old password enough times to lock me out.
most people here have a "system" and systematically make a password based on the month, some known factor, and a few things that swap occasionally around. This creates a system where the password itself taken alone might be strong, but the differences between passwords are minimal for the same user, and although it's against company policy, most users havre to jot it down or use a reference system somewhere near their desk to help them remeber azs the more often you change a password, the harder they get to remember (and keep seperate), wors so when certain systems require alternate passwords you need to have or if you have multiple user accounts. (I have 3 just in AD, another in AIX, and severall apps I use have their own password system, ALL of which have the same password enforcement, but all of which do NOT support the same formatting).
Being so restrictive, and also being able to eliminate names and a dictionary, and enforcing special characters and "must begin with a letter" rules actually make the password LESS secure!
Oh God, i nearly forgot MoO III. Part II was awesome, and 3 completely killed the series! Good call.
I was also going to add Dragon Age to this list (not the RPG that's out now and doing well, but the MMO that was supposed to release in 2006/2007 that made it into beta, and then got canned because the server-side code was so bad it couldn't handle 100 concurrent users... The game looked AWESOME, had great content, and some real nice ideas, and serious promise, but when they asked the company for $3Mil more and a 9-12 month launch delay to fix the serverside issues, it got panned. too bad. Now, i can't even find links to it.... (was hoping they'd open source it there for a while)
I'm also afraid, after a couple days playing the Beta, Cryptic is going to end up on the street panning for change over Star Trek. OH GOD it's awful... Imagine flying around space (that acts like youre in an atmosphere, no momentum) in a ship that can only pan on 2 axis instead of 3, and that it flies at 1MPH in combat. Then add on top a first person exploration and combat system (when you beam down) that any of the freeware FPS games on the market have both better play experience, better graphics, and more function. The entire game engine is horrible. The ONLY thing it;s got going for it is that they effectively communicated the "treckie" experience of walking around, talking to people, scanning things, and it sorta feels like a real slow replay of some classic trek episodes. If it wasn;t for the AGGONIZINGLY slow and overly simple interface it might not be a bad game, but after just 3 hours at it i had to log into something else and just smash stuff... They really could have used the CoH engine for this game with only a skin modification and it would be light years better. STAY AWAY!
Simple, protect the FRANCHISE but not to work itself. After a time period, the original work enters public domain, period, it becomes free in any form of media someone's willing to release it on. If you're an author (or buy the rights) and actively produce something that is released to the open market for sale at least once everny 10 years based solidly on the original work (a sequal, spin off, re-imagining, etc, not just a "cover" or remastered work by someone new), then we'll let you protect the rights to DERIVITIVE works as long as you can still profit from them on your own (or until you sell them again).
I do prefer something slightly different: This provides a reasonable copywrite term for owners of original works, while also protecting and encouraging active investment in valuable works
1) Death of author plus 25 or death of surviving spouse plus 10, whichever comes second. If the initial author is in fact a registered business instead of a person, the copywrite will be 40 years from date of publication. 2) complete sale of rights from the author to a 3rd party sets the copywrite to 25 years from that date. Sale from a spouse to a 3rd party sets the copywrite at 10 years. 3) sale from one party to another not involving the author does not modify the current copywrite term (and that term must be explicetly spelled out in the sale of rights as confirmed by the copywrite office). 4) sale or bequeath from a 3rd party back to the original author or surviving spouse extends the copywrite back to #1 if it had been reduced by sale to a business or 3rd party. 5) a business or entity in possession of the rights may extend those rights by 10 years if at a point in the previous 10 years a product or derivitive work was produced and openly sold at FRAND prices (produced and sold on media available for general sale at non-exclusive merchants, or produced for which tickets to view were sold without restriction on purchasers). This can be done indeffinetly so long as new work is produced! 6) the ORIGINAL work (and each derivitiave) automatically becomes public domain for free access and redistribution in any form after 50 years from publication of that piece of work (if original publisehd in 2000 and derrivitive in 2004, copywrite is 2050 and 2054 respectively), only the rights to produce DERIVITIVE works remain after 50 years and only that right can be extended. (reworkings, remasters, re-edit, directors cuts, and "feat." etc do NOT count as derivitive works, only NEW work reshot/rerecorded and intended to be a completely new work (for example, sequals, complete franchize reboots, spin-offs count, but Metallica doing their old songs with a new symphony orchastra does not, nor would another band doing a cover of their work count). 7) Seperation of tracks/works: placing an old or remastered track on new media as part of a compilation does NOT grant protection to the other track any differently than had it been released indipendently. When works are released as collections, it must be indicated on the packaging which works have differing copywrites by year. Public domain works may be included in compilations, but they must not include any forms of copy protection the remainder of the work may be protected with. 8) "associated work" in the form of behind the scenes features, commentary, shorts, deleted scenes, lost episodes, etc, even if released later as features of another work, hold the copywrite of the original work the associated work is based on. 9) (likely most contravercial here) manditory sale of work: Should a 3rd party offer a copywrite holder who is not the author or surviving spouse a price equivalent to not less than 3 times the previous 25 years total profit on the collective work (adjusted for inflation), the work must be sold in any case where new or derivitive work has not been produced for sale within the previous 10 years, provided not less than 10% of the additional profit from the work produced by the new owner is provided to the owner forced to sell until such a time as the copywrite fully expires (including all extentions). This may not be enforced on any work less than 30 years from original date of publish, nor may the price offer be below the total costs incurred by the owner if the work was un/marginally profitable during the previous 25 years. (this clause is to enforce companies who bought rights from an author to either actively use the work for the intent of profit, or to sell it to someone willing to do so while covering the current owner for any losses as well as guaranteeing potential future profit should the buyer make any.
There are 4 women between our 3 active games. Every game group I've ever been in aside one in high school has had at least 1 female. Go to a convention sometime, it's about 1/3rd women. More so at Steampunk conventions than role playing, but RPG draws a lot more women than comics and computers (though there are a TON of women online playing games, and usually you'll never know it, some of the most hardcore tweakers I know are chicks).
The kids of all the members our our active game groups are starting to become interested. The oldest is only 8.
Kids imagine more than you know, and given the wealth of influence from media, movies, stories, and more, they can come up with some pretty hard core stuff.
We didn't "imagine" as much as you think with D&D either, we had pictures of monters to look at, descriptions and detailed accounts to reference, the only one doing any real imagining was the DM and only if he wrote his only story, or more commonly augmented one to better suit tyhe group). The rest of us were simply "role playing" which is what it's all about. Reacting to events and scenarios as someone else might react instead of yourself. The rest was all simply in the rules. It's a scripted session of pretend, not very far different from the choose-your-own-adventure books from the 70's and 80's. The advantage of it was simply that the rules were basically wide open for any conceivable action to be done by a player instead of a strict set of options on your turn.
Today, it's better. We have actual play maps (which were allways optional back in the day, and rarely used because of the massive time investment in making them and expense of miniatures). The TV is a central view of the action, initiative, and quest notes. Players use laptops to manage their character and move them about on the screen by joining the server. They can see what monters look like (currently they're simply icons, scanned from the books, so it's really not all that different) Rolling and to-hit calcuations have been replaced by macros which makes combat MUCH more efficient and lets us "play" more and roll less (though some still prefer real dice). It's easier to get a mental image of what's going on, and there's less "narrative" as the GM simply explains your surroundings and relative position to each other.
We're still huddles in a room over character sheets running through adventures led by a GM pulling the strings of NPCs. The stories now are not much diferent than they used to be. It's quite entertaining, and action happens a lot faster than it used to.
I completely agree. "Pen and Paper" has been replaced with digital character sheets on laptops, an electronic map displayed on a big-screen TV (including FoW) to let players know where they are in relation to objects and creatures, and some still prefer real dice but command-line rolling using macros is much more efficient.
MapTool from RPTools.net is by far the core tool we use. We have custom macros for all the powers each player is using, and it's not that hard to keep them up to date (players only level up about once a month, and don't get new powers every level, and the macros are pretty easy to write). the DM's notebook runs 2 instances of it, one for the DM's view and another on the second screen (TV) for everyone to see. The maps themselves for pregenerated campaigns are available online, though more recently, we've been making our own (from scans mostly).
They ARE. I serviced DR systems for serveral power companies. by LAW there is not even an internet connection allowed in the BUILDING (let alont the room) housing the grid switch control systems, not even a modem.
I was frisked each time entering, and had to go through 2-3 layers of security to get in the room. Even then, i could only touch the DR equipment once an employee physically disconnected it (for hardware repairs), or they had to enter all the keystoks personally, all i could do was watch and instruct.
This is NOT for the grid itself, it's for the "smartgrid" essentially, coming up with secure protocols to collect billing and use information from read-only devices at houses.
No,this is simply integrating PoE technology to smartgrid devices. It has absolutely NOTHING to do with managing the grid, grid switching systems, or other critical data that makes the grid stable (that's already a segregated system, actually even more secure than the ATM networks).
This is about policies for ensuring your home grid monitoring meter can access real-time info about local grid conditions, and to report usage information over the grid to the power company. It is NOT in any way about connecting our electric grid system to the internet.
Coffee pots? Yea, sorry, that's an OSHA violation. The cube power systems are not rated for that. not to mention, bulding services allowing that would itself violate the contract. it;s a terminable offense to use ANY non-approved device that's not USB powered. I can wait a while for coffee, but at 4.5v that's gonna be a REALLY LONG brew time...
We already protested, and were met with "we don;t care, suck it up" attitudes, since the contract is more than a decade from it's end. Also, it lasted about 2 whole days before morale tumbled, and caffine withdrawls kicked in.
Yea, prices are rediculous, we all agree. nothing we can do until the contract expires. They used to be able to raise prices at will, but at least not the board now gets to approve that (last contract renegotiation about 4 years ago apparently set that in place). They can raise 5% without asking, and do EVERY year.
2600 people in our building, and it's gotten bad enough that MAYBE 300 people actually eat lunch here daily. The rest either take the trip off campus, or walk 1/4 mile down the hill to the next building which has a much better cafe. When it rains, the line in the cafe is rediculous, and that day they'll serve they're 2 most expensive dishes and the salad bar will be closed...
5.5 more years in the contract, they've already been told it will not be renewed. The employer is a non-profit (or at least this division is) because of our contracts with the government.
yea, thanks. Not to mention: Cube power grids are NOT designed to have high amp devices like coffe pots/warmers/etc plugged in. It's an OSHA violation to do so, and those fines are WAY more than coffee costs.
Coffee is a cost like any other. To support employees, certain costs are expected. A computer to sit at, an ergonomic chair, pens and paper, ink, janitorial services, bathroom supplies, phone and DID number, and more.
A complete coffee service costs less than $1 per employee (that drinks it) per day if bought in industrial bulk. there are dozens of other costs that far exceed that. many companies simply use an honor system and place a can with a slot near the coffee pot and ask folks to spare $0.25 for each cup, and many not only break even on that, but actually profit, and use the money for company and area parties.
As we roll out IT improvements, costs there are shrinking, making us more competitive. As we roll out the IP phone system, we're shifting a whole building of employees into at-home workers (we already have about 3,000 of them), which is not only a huge facility cost savings, but there's tax incentives to do it too. Desktop imaging pretty much has put the quash on most helpdesk calls. going paperless for most things is also reducing costs greatly. Salaries have been flat for 2 years in a row. We're more profitable than EVER in the company history. Curring coffee would be seen as nothing more than an profiteering decision and a slap in the face to HR and productivity, and we'd actually loose some good employees over it I'm sure (Hots mainframe operators LIVE on coffee and coffee alone it seems, and those guys are REALLY hard to come by and claim way in excess of $100,000 salaries).
"free coffee" is a REAL big deal when you work on a campus that owns and operates a cafeteria through a 3rd party cafeteria provider. 1) The cafe locks in services, departments that want coffee must buy it from the cafe as a service, or as individuals you have to buy it by the cup in the cafe. having your own coffee pot is strictly against the contract the cafe has with the building. They charge nearly $1.50 for crap near-instant coffee when they're open, plus an extra charge for the cup if you don't bring your own (and more if the cup is "excessively large" which I have yet to find one that is not, so we all use massive travel cups). Creamers are extra! Fresh brewed "gourmet" coffee is over $2 a cup, and there's no such thing as premium coffee (espresso, etc). A basic coffee habit buying coffee in the cafe gets expensive FAST. I started bringing 1 cup full from home, and having a refil at 8:30, 10 ans 11:30. That was running $110/month plus tax!!! more for COFFEE that I typically spent on a week's groceries.
2) The cafe is closed from 9:30 to 11:30. That means no coffee between those hours unless your department pays for service, or unless you take a 15+ minute round trip to the nearest gas station that serves sludge in a cup or 20 to a starbucks.
3) Depertments can buy coffee as a "service" from the cafe. This comes in the form of rental on a pot system (industrial 3 burner Brunn type system like you see in a pancake house or restaurant). They provide coffee and creamer by the box and we brew it ourselves. It's a lot cheaper than buying by the cup, but for a department of about 80 people, its still hundreds of dollars per month.
When i joined, i was one of 3 coffee drinkers out of 16 people in our area, so we did not have a pot at all. (well, we did, untiul building services found out and took it away). I initially went to quit coffee (that failed), so I started lugging a 16 cup thermos to work and drinking cups from that. It was cheap, but i looked like an idiot walking across the parking lot with than cannister. After a few months, 6 of the 16 (a few people rotated out) in our immediate area were doing it too, as well as about a dozen upstairs also part of our group, so the boss offered to start the process getting a machine. At this point, we pay $2 per employee per week for coffee service, half is subsidized OUT OF POCKET by our own boss...
A couple of months ago, the cafe nearly double the price of the coffee service. Several depertments cut off the service as a result. It was back on in 2 weeks. Performance dropped precipitously! The compmany now pays for our entire main group, about 85 people, to have coffee at no charge.
Other buildings on campus that have their own seperate cafe's do not have such restrictive coffee practices, pay loewr rates, have "community funded" pots in some places, and in others even have a full service coffee station where someone is paid to keep the pots full all the time. 2 of our buildings have a coffee shop in them, seperate from the cafe.
We're still fighting them on Soda for the non-coffee drinkers. There are soda machines all over in break rooms, but it's fucking $1.50 for a 12oz can!!! It's CRIMINAL for a company to profit so highly off employees who have no other real options (there are few if any department fridges, and if you put a can of soda in their, you'll never see it again). We're trying to force the cafe to provide soda as it does coffee, by the pallett, and do away with the machines except in the cafe and public areas. We'd bring 2 liters, but there's NO ICE MACHINE ANYWHERE, except in the cafe, which they charge $0.20 for a small cup of ice (the 4 hours a day they're open, which closes compeltely at 1:30).
In their own lab systems as they may deploy them occasionally in snadboxed network segments, they do whatever they want. In our formal development and testing environments, it;s a different story. We typically have 4-5 code migrations areas per application from: Unit code testing, system/load testing, Customer QA, Production, and occasionally a specialized environment. In the Unit environment, they have read/write access to most of the server, but this varies by OS. under Windows, they pretty much have to be admins (but not local). In Linux/Unix, they only have read/write/ex in the directories specific to their app. We have hardened linux images, and they can't access core functions or configurations outside of their app. In System environments, they're lucky to get read access (except in Windows environments where their access is the same as unit envs).
In QA, Prod, Training, or other environments, Devs can't even log in, except with the same credentials as a user that might use the system in production. An Operations team, dedicated application support team, network security, and a few other people have admin rights, but even our software deployment team looses their login rights once the system is put into production.
Apple didn't make the GSM chips, infineon did. Apple made the phone and OS interface that talks to those chips, that's what the patents hinge on, and designing an interface to interoperate with a 3rd party technology itself is not patentable except in specifics (otherwise it could easily be considered obvious or evolutionary), and in this case, Nokia had patents on specifics, and Apple design a method that did not infringe on their IP after nokia tried to strong arm them. Even still, those negotiatios were 2.5-3 years ago, if not longer, and Nokia took THIS LONG to file acase, into Apple's 3rd generation with a 4th pending? No, they were working to see wether they might even have a case at all, or risk getting slammed and loosing the RAND income they have from others would could suddenly stop paying... I don't think they counted on a solid standing for Apple in counter suit, thus the new action (for which I can find no links to any of the newly questioned patents, so it certainly sounds more like a political move or play to swing media than an actual infringement, given they're admitting it will be into 2011 even before a review could be completed).
Others were happy to license, under RAND, but nokia insisted not only on higher than normal RAND fees, but also a cross licensing deal. instead, apple created their own IP around Nokia's patents, combined with leveraging the actual chips from 3rd paties who already had the licensing rights including resale and remanufacture. Apple also challenged some of the patents as obvious or unpatentable ideas and simply refused to pay the hiked rates nokia insited on.
I've gone through the bulk of patents Nokia is claiming they hold, and they are weak in most cases, or related to components apple did not themselves design or make and are licensed properly by others who sold apple those chips. On the counter, Apple has strong and clear patents they're throwing back at nokia, at least one of which has already been upheld in court. Apple's patents also hold a much higer per-device license fee than even the GMS liucenses nokia is throwing around. What i can find NO links to is what Nokia has lobbed back... Between Apple, Intel, NeXT, BSD, and Open Source code bases, I can't imagine much in their system that's both patentable, and not already owned by one of those...
It simply is a point going to completeness of the OS. Fancy new OS, DX11 supprot baked in, and nothing that takes advantage of it. Screensaves have long been a staple of showing off the OS, and the lack of one really starts making this feel more of a SP and less of a full release.
We have 15,000 exchange users. over 35% use an iPhone to access it. the iPhone is not a corporate supproted or subsidized device either, so there are all PERSONAL phones in addition to the one handed out by the company... Due to it's populatirt, the level of control the Exchange admins have over it, and the fact it requires no 3rd party serevrs or software beyond the Exchange clusters themselves, odds are we're switching the corporate contract from Sprint to AT&T as soon as the current one runs out in May (especially since about 80% of our executives are currently sporting an iPhone).
Yes, in fact, the ONLY phone platform currently certified that meets all of the DISA STIGs for corporate device security is actually Windows Mobile 6.5.
Even with all it's remote management, a BES server and blackberry phone isn't up to government snuff. Obama has exceptions in place for his own (including restrictions on what he can use it for).
The iPhone is currently pending the same status, and with a minor software update and an Exchange server, it would meet 100% of the STIG, without requireing seperate 3rd party servers as even Win mobile does (and also would not require the named-in-the-STIG 3rd party client license to install on the phone costing $49 each).
Hm. Thanks for the data. I was under the impression from my host folks that they had Z/VM installed inside Z/OS as well as LPAR'd off. I'll follow up with them and get better educated.
unfortunately, I'm hands-off from the host. I'm in the anylist side of the house for now, and don'lt get to log in and play anymore... I just design the infrastructure on paper:(
Actually, I use the screensaver set to a couple minutes to keep prying eyes off my screen when i have to turn around and talk to someone, PM kicks in when idle, which if it's doing something like ripping a DVD or downloading ISOs it's not, and I'd prefer not to lock the machine every time I step away from the desk (as that also places my chat windows in Away, but the screen saver does not).
Win95 had issues with networking, and didn't run anything resembling a modern browser. Also, it's 2GB partition size disk limit was a real PITA... I actually prefered NT 3.51 to it except the fact the Win9x GUI was obviously better, and 3.51 was a MUCH slimmer OS and games that ran in DOS mode were still compatible with it.
That said, thanks for the nice comment.
ME had memory leaks, and could crash, especially if you lacked enough RAM, or were missing hardware based controllers for sound, video, and CD ROM. However, if you used parts from the microsoft HCL for ME, problems were few, so long as you rebooted it regularly. (which 95 and 98 also had big memory management issues for power users, the best thing about Win2K was you could run it a week without a reboot!).
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No, the coupon is what happened when micrsoft lost a court case that proved people were actually HARMED and incurred financial losses. What COST did WGA bring to you? (and system crashes don't count, those are already excluded from warranty in the EULA).
Worse, the class action is merely a privacy issue, not anything that woul dhave actually been validatible by any real damages or bunsiness impact. WGA didn't COST anyone anything other than a few minutes of their time to implement the patch that added it. Even if the OS crashed or had issues because of it, or simply due to the reboot, is irrelevent due to the "no warranty extressed or implied" regarding the software as spelled out in the EULA.
At best, micsorsoft might have been forced to remove this feature, and might have paid some big fine to the government and covered some laywer (massive) expenses and fees, but judging from the whopping $16 each plantifs got in the last successful anti-M$ case, which WAS backed by damages (inflated pricing due to anti-competitive moves), what did these people expect to get, $1 each if they were lucky? if the case continues either way, the removal of WGA is still possible, so all we're loosing a 100 million people geting $1 each, after spending $3 in paperwork processing and a lot of time to get it.
Also, the question if WGA is even an invasion of privacy liekly will not even hold up in court. The activiation itself does NOT require registration, and only collects basic information about your machine IDs, IPs, etc, not much different from what any website could collect, and far LESS information that is sent to M$ each time you have a crash and let it report the issue. I think M$ might actually WIN this case. (though I'm hoping they don't).
We swap every 30 days, with a 10 character minimum that must include at least 1 capitol letter, at least 1 special character, at least 1 digit, can't be similar to your name, ID, or the last 12 passwords used, can't be a password used in the last 365 days, and it patched against a dictionary of thousands of words and hundreds of common passwords.
I'll pick 3 or 4 in a row before it even lets me keep one. It's a big PITA. More so that once I change the default password (which effects multiple systems) I still have to manually change the password in several other apps to match, and I've got about 2 minutes to change it in my PDA before it tries the old password enough times to lock me out.
most people here have a "system" and systematically make a password based on the month, some known factor, and a few things that swap occasionally around. This creates a system where the password itself taken alone might be strong, but the differences between passwords are minimal for the same user, and although it's against company policy, most users havre to jot it down or use a reference system somewhere near their desk to help them remeber azs the more often you change a password, the harder they get to remember (and keep seperate), wors so when certain systems require alternate passwords you need to have or if you have multiple user accounts. (I have 3 just in AD, another in AIX, and severall apps I use have their own password system, ALL of which have the same password enforcement, but all of which do NOT support the same formatting).
Being so restrictive, and also being able to eliminate names and a dictionary, and enforcing special characters and "must begin with a letter" rules actually make the password LESS secure!
Oh God, i nearly forgot MoO III. Part II was awesome, and 3 completely killed the series! Good call.
I was also going to add Dragon Age to this list (not the RPG that's out now and doing well, but the MMO that was supposed to release in 2006/2007 that made it into beta, and then got canned because the server-side code was so bad it couldn't handle 100 concurrent users... The game looked AWESOME, had great content, and some real nice ideas, and serious promise, but when they asked the company for $3Mil more and a 9-12 month launch delay to fix the serverside issues, it got panned. too bad. Now, i can't even find links to it.... (was hoping they'd open source it there for a while)
I'm also afraid, after a couple days playing the Beta, Cryptic is going to end up on the street panning for change over Star Trek. OH GOD it's awful... Imagine flying around space (that acts like youre in an atmosphere, no momentum) in a ship that can only pan on 2 axis instead of 3, and that it flies at 1MPH in combat. Then add on top a first person exploration and combat system (when you beam down) that any of the freeware FPS games on the market have both better play experience, better graphics, and more function. The entire game engine is horrible. The ONLY thing it;s got going for it is that they effectively communicated the "treckie" experience of walking around, talking to people, scanning things, and it sorta feels like a real slow replay of some classic trek episodes. If it wasn;t for the AGGONIZINGLY slow and overly simple interface it might not be a bad game, but after just 3 hours at it i had to log into something else and just smash stuff... They really could have used the CoH engine for this game with only a skin modification and it would be light years better. STAY AWAY!
Simple, protect the FRANCHISE but not to work itself. After a time period, the original work enters public domain, period, it becomes free in any form of media someone's willing to release it on. If you're an author (or buy the rights) and actively produce something that is released to the open market for sale at least once everny 10 years based solidly on the original work (a sequal, spin off, re-imagining, etc, not just a "cover" or remastered work by someone new), then we'll let you protect the rights to DERIVITIVE works as long as you can still profit from them on your own (or until you sell them again).
I do prefer something slightly different: This provides a reasonable copywrite term for owners of original works, while also protecting and encouraging active investment in valuable works
1) Death of author plus 25 or death of surviving spouse plus 10, whichever comes second. If the initial author is in fact a registered business instead of a person, the copywrite will be 40 years from date of publication.
2) complete sale of rights from the author to a 3rd party sets the copywrite to 25 years from that date. Sale from a spouse to a 3rd party sets the copywrite at 10 years.
3) sale from one party to another not involving the author does not modify the current copywrite term (and that term must be explicetly spelled out in the sale of rights as confirmed by the copywrite office).
4) sale or bequeath from a 3rd party back to the original author or surviving spouse extends the copywrite back to #1 if it had been reduced by sale to a business or 3rd party.
5) a business or entity in possession of the rights may extend those rights by 10 years if at a point in the previous 10 years a product or derivitive work was produced and openly sold at FRAND prices (produced and sold on media available for general sale at non-exclusive merchants, or produced for which tickets to view were sold without restriction on purchasers). This can be done indeffinetly so long as new work is produced!
6) the ORIGINAL work (and each derivitiave) automatically becomes public domain for free access and redistribution in any form after 50 years from publication of that piece of work (if original publisehd in 2000 and derrivitive in 2004, copywrite is 2050 and 2054 respectively), only the rights to produce DERIVITIVE works remain after 50 years and only that right can be extended. (reworkings, remasters, re-edit, directors cuts, and "feat." etc do NOT count as derivitive works, only NEW work reshot/rerecorded and intended to be a completely new work (for example, sequals, complete franchize reboots, spin-offs count, but Metallica doing their old songs with a new symphony orchastra does not, nor would another band doing a cover of their work count).
7) Seperation of tracks/works: placing an old or remastered track on new media as part of a compilation does NOT grant protection to the other track any differently than had it been released indipendently. When works are released as collections, it must be indicated on the packaging which works have differing copywrites by year. Public domain works may be included in compilations, but they must not include any forms of copy protection the remainder of the work may be protected with.
8) "associated work" in the form of behind the scenes features, commentary, shorts, deleted scenes, lost episodes, etc, even if released later as features of another work, hold the copywrite of the original work the associated work is based on.
9) (likely most contravercial here) manditory sale of work: Should a 3rd party offer a copywrite holder who is not the author or surviving spouse a price equivalent to not less than 3 times the previous 25 years total profit on the collective work (adjusted for inflation), the work must be sold in any case where new or derivitive work has not been produced for sale within the previous 10 years, provided not less than 10% of the additional profit from the work produced by the new owner is provided to the owner forced to sell until such a time as the copywrite fully expires (including all extentions). This may not be enforced on any work less than 30 years from original date of publish, nor may the price offer be below the total costs incurred by the owner if the work was un/marginally profitable during the previous 25 years. (this clause is to enforce companies who bought rights from an author to either actively use the work for the intent of profit, or to sell it to someone willing to do so while covering the current owner for any losses as well as guaranteeing potential future profit should the buyer make any.
In a nutshell: If you made it
There are 4 women between our 3 active games. Every game group I've ever been in aside one in high school has had at least 1 female. Go to a convention sometime, it's about 1/3rd women. More so at Steampunk conventions than role playing, but RPG draws a lot more women than comics and computers (though there are a TON of women online playing games, and usually you'll never know it, some of the most hardcore tweakers I know are chicks).
The kids of all the members our our active game groups are starting to become interested. The oldest is only 8.
Kids imagine more than you know, and given the wealth of influence from media, movies, stories, and more, they can come up with some pretty hard core stuff.
We didn't "imagine" as much as you think with D&D either, we had pictures of monters to look at, descriptions and detailed accounts to reference, the only one doing any real imagining was the DM and only if he wrote his only story, or more commonly augmented one to better suit tyhe group). The rest of us were simply "role playing" which is what it's all about. Reacting to events and scenarios as someone else might react instead of yourself. The rest was all simply in the rules. It's a scripted session of pretend, not very far different from the choose-your-own-adventure books from the 70's and 80's. The advantage of it was simply that the rules were basically wide open for any conceivable action to be done by a player instead of a strict set of options on your turn.
Today, it's better. We have actual play maps (which were allways optional back in the day, and rarely used because of the massive time investment in making them and expense of miniatures). The TV is a central view of the action, initiative, and quest notes. Players use laptops to manage their character and move them about on the screen by joining the server. They can see what monters look like (currently they're simply icons, scanned from the books, so it's really not all that different) Rolling and to-hit calcuations have been replaced by macros which makes combat MUCH more efficient and lets us "play" more and roll less (though some still prefer real dice). It's easier to get a mental image of what's going on, and there's less "narrative" as the GM simply explains your surroundings and relative position to each other.
We're still huddles in a room over character sheets running through adventures led by a GM pulling the strings of NPCs. The stories now are not much diferent than they used to be. It's quite entertaining, and action happens a lot faster than it used to.
I completely agree. "Pen and Paper" has been replaced with digital character sheets on laptops, an electronic map displayed on a big-screen TV (including FoW) to let players know where they are in relation to objects and creatures, and some still prefer real dice but command-line rolling using macros is much more efficient.
MapTool from RPTools.net is by far the core tool we use. We have custom macros for all the powers each player is using, and it's not that hard to keep them up to date (players only level up about once a month, and don't get new powers every level, and the macros are pretty easy to write). the DM's notebook runs 2 instances of it, one for the DM's view and another on the second screen (TV) for everyone to see. The maps themselves for pregenerated campaigns are available online, though more recently, we've been making our own (from scans mostly).
They ARE. I serviced DR systems for serveral power companies. by LAW there is not even an internet connection allowed in the BUILDING (let alont the room) housing the grid switch control systems, not even a modem.
I was frisked each time entering, and had to go through 2-3 layers of security to get in the room. Even then, i could only touch the DR equipment once an employee physically disconnected it (for hardware repairs), or they had to enter all the keystoks personally, all i could do was watch and instruct.
This is NOT for the grid itself, it's for the "smartgrid" essentially, coming up with secure protocols to collect billing and use information from read-only devices at houses.
No,this is simply integrating PoE technology to smartgrid devices. It has absolutely NOTHING to do with managing the grid, grid switching systems, or other critical data that makes the grid stable (that's already a segregated system, actually even more secure than the ATM networks).
This is about policies for ensuring your home grid monitoring meter can access real-time info about local grid conditions, and to report usage information over the grid to the power company. It is NOT in any way about connecting our electric grid system to the internet.
Coffee pots? Yea, sorry, that's an OSHA violation. The cube power systems are not rated for that. not to mention, bulding services allowing that would itself violate the contract. it;s a terminable offense to use ANY non-approved device that's not USB powered. I can wait a while for coffee, but at 4.5v that's gonna be a REALLY LONG brew time...
We already protested, and were met with "we don;t care, suck it up" attitudes, since the contract is more than a decade from it's end. Also, it lasted about 2 whole days before morale tumbled, and caffine withdrawls kicked in.
Yea, prices are rediculous, we all agree. nothing we can do until the contract expires. They used to be able to raise prices at will, but at least not the board now gets to approve that (last contract renegotiation about 4 years ago apparently set that in place). They can raise 5% without asking, and do EVERY year.
2600 people in our building, and it's gotten bad enough that MAYBE 300 people actually eat lunch here daily. The rest either take the trip off campus, or walk 1/4 mile down the hill to the next building which has a much better cafe. When it rains, the line in the cafe is rediculous, and that day they'll serve they're 2 most expensive dishes and the salad bar will be closed...
5.5 more years in the contract, they've already been told it will not be renewed. The employer is a non-profit (or at least this division is) because of our contracts with the government.
yea, thanks. Not to mention: Cube power grids are NOT designed to have high amp devices like coffe pots/warmers/etc plugged in. It's an OSHA violation to do so, and those fines are WAY more than coffee costs.
Coffee is a cost like any other. To support employees, certain costs are expected. A computer to sit at, an ergonomic chair, pens and paper, ink, janitorial services, bathroom supplies, phone and DID number, and more.
A complete coffee service costs less than $1 per employee (that drinks it) per day if bought in industrial bulk. there are dozens of other costs that far exceed that. many companies simply use an honor system and place a can with a slot near the coffee pot and ask folks to spare $0.25 for each cup, and many not only break even on that, but actually profit, and use the money for company and area parties.
As we roll out IT improvements, costs there are shrinking, making us more competitive. As we roll out the IP phone system, we're shifting a whole building of employees into at-home workers (we already have about 3,000 of them), which is not only a huge facility cost savings, but there's tax incentives to do it too. Desktop imaging pretty much has put the quash on most helpdesk calls. going paperless for most things is also reducing costs greatly. Salaries have been flat for 2 years in a row. We're more profitable than EVER in the company history. Curring coffee would be seen as nothing more than an profiteering decision and a slap in the face to HR and productivity, and we'd actually loose some good employees over it I'm sure (Hots mainframe operators LIVE on coffee and coffee alone it seems, and those guys are REALLY hard to come by and claim way in excess of $100,000 salaries).
"free coffee" is a REAL big deal when you work on a campus that owns and operates a cafeteria through a 3rd party cafeteria provider. /month plus tax!!! more for COFFEE that I typically spent on a week's groceries.
1) The cafe locks in services, departments that want coffee must buy it from the cafe as a service, or as individuals you have to buy it by the cup in the cafe. having your own coffee pot is strictly against the contract the cafe has with the building. They charge nearly $1.50 for crap near-instant coffee when they're open, plus an extra charge for the cup if you don't bring your own (and more if the cup is "excessively large" which I have yet to find one that is not, so we all use massive travel cups). Creamers are extra! Fresh brewed "gourmet" coffee is over $2 a cup, and there's no such thing as premium coffee (espresso, etc). A basic coffee habit buying coffee in the cafe gets expensive FAST. I started bringing 1 cup full from home, and having a refil at 8:30, 10 ans 11:30. That was running $110
2) The cafe is closed from 9:30 to 11:30. That means no coffee between those hours unless your department pays for service, or unless you take a 15+ minute round trip to the nearest gas station that serves sludge in a cup or 20 to a starbucks.
3) Depertments can buy coffee as a "service" from the cafe. This comes in the form of rental on a pot system (industrial 3 burner Brunn type system like you see in a pancake house or restaurant). They provide coffee and creamer by the box and we brew it ourselves. It's a lot cheaper than buying by the cup, but for a department of about 80 people, its still hundreds of dollars per month.
When i joined, i was one of 3 coffee drinkers out of 16 people in our area, so we did not have a pot at all. (well, we did, untiul building services found out and took it away). I initially went to quit coffee (that failed), so I started lugging a 16 cup thermos to work and drinking cups from that. It was cheap, but i looked like an idiot walking across the parking lot with than cannister. After a few months, 6 of the 16 (a few people rotated out) in our immediate area were doing it too, as well as about a dozen upstairs also part of our group, so the boss offered to start the process getting a machine. At this point, we pay $2 per employee per week for coffee service, half is subsidized OUT OF POCKET by our own boss...
A couple of months ago, the cafe nearly double the price of the coffee service. Several depertments cut off the service as a result. It was back on in 2 weeks. Performance dropped precipitously! The compmany now pays for our entire main group, about 85 people, to have coffee at no charge.
Other buildings on campus that have their own seperate cafe's do not have such restrictive coffee practices, pay loewr rates, have "community funded" pots in some places, and in others even have a full service coffee station where someone is paid to keep the pots full all the time. 2 of our buildings have a coffee shop in them, seperate from the cafe.
We're still fighting them on Soda for the non-coffee drinkers. There are soda machines all over in break rooms, but it's fucking $1.50 for a 12oz can!!! It's CRIMINAL for a company to profit so highly off employees who have no other real options (there are few if any department fridges, and if you put a can of soda in their, you'll never see it again). We're trying to force the cafe to provide soda as it does coffee, by the pallett, and do away with the machines except in the cafe and public areas. We'd bring 2 liters, but there's NO ICE MACHINE ANYWHERE, except in the cafe, which they charge $0.20 for a small cup of ice (the 4 hours a day they're open, which closes compeltely at 1:30).
In their own lab systems as they may deploy them occasionally in snadboxed network segments, they do whatever they want. In our formal development and testing environments, it;s a different story. We typically have 4-5 code migrations areas per application from: Unit code testing, system/load testing, Customer QA, Production, and occasionally a specialized environment. In the Unit environment, they have read/write access to most of the server, but this varies by OS. under Windows, they pretty much have to be admins (but not local). In Linux/Unix, they only have read/write/ex in the directories specific to their app. We have hardened linux images, and they can't access core functions or configurations outside of their app. In System environments, they're lucky to get read access (except in Windows environments where their access is the same as unit envs).
In QA, Prod, Training, or other environments, Devs can't even log in, except with the same credentials as a user that might use the system in production. An Operations team, dedicated application support team, network security, and a few other people have admin rights, but even our software deployment team looses their login rights once the system is put into production.
Apple didn't make the GSM chips, infineon did. Apple made the phone and OS interface that talks to those chips, that's what the patents hinge on, and designing an interface to interoperate with a 3rd party technology itself is not patentable except in specifics (otherwise it could easily be considered obvious or evolutionary), and in this case, Nokia had patents on specifics, and Apple design a method that did not infringe on their IP after nokia tried to strong arm them. Even still, those negotiatios were 2.5-3 years ago, if not longer, and Nokia took THIS LONG to file acase, into Apple's 3rd generation with a 4th pending? No, they were working to see wether they might even have a case at all, or risk getting slammed and loosing the RAND income they have from others would could suddenly stop paying... I don't think they counted on a solid standing for Apple in counter suit, thus the new action (for which I can find no links to any of the newly questioned patents, so it certainly sounds more like a political move or play to swing media than an actual infringement, given they're admitting it will be into 2011 even before a review could be completed).
MacBook 13" with education discount was $728 yesterday...
Others were happy to license, under RAND, but nokia insisted not only on higher than normal RAND fees, but also a cross licensing deal. instead, apple created their own IP around Nokia's patents, combined with leveraging the actual chips from 3rd paties who already had the licensing rights including resale and remanufacture. Apple also challenged some of the patents as obvious or unpatentable ideas and simply refused to pay the hiked rates nokia insited on.
I've gone through the bulk of patents Nokia is claiming they hold, and they are weak in most cases, or related to components apple did not themselves design or make and are licensed properly by others who sold apple those chips. On the counter, Apple has strong and clear patents they're throwing back at nokia, at least one of which has already been upheld in court. Apple's patents also hold a much higer per-device license fee than even the GMS liucenses nokia is throwing around. What i can find NO links to is what Nokia has lobbed back... Between Apple, Intel, NeXT, BSD, and Open Source code bases, I can't imagine much in their system that's both patentable, and not already owned by one of those...
It simply is a point going to completeness of the OS. Fancy new OS, DX11 supprot baked in, and nothing that takes advantage of it. Screensaves have long been a staple of showing off the OS, and the lack of one really starts making this feel more of a SP and less of a full release.
We have 15,000 exchange users. over 35% use an iPhone to access it. the iPhone is not a corporate supproted or subsidized device either, so there are all PERSONAL phones in addition to the one handed out by the company... Due to it's populatirt, the level of control the Exchange admins have over it, and the fact it requires no 3rd party serevrs or software beyond the Exchange clusters themselves, odds are we're switching the corporate contract from Sprint to AT&T as soon as the current one runs out in May (especially since about 80% of our executives are currently sporting an iPhone).
Yes, in fact, the ONLY phone platform currently certified that meets all of the DISA STIGs for corporate device security is actually Windows Mobile 6.5.
Even with all it's remote management, a BES server and blackberry phone isn't up to government snuff. Obama has exceptions in place for his own (including restrictions on what he can use it for).
The iPhone is currently pending the same status, and with a minor software update and an Exchange server, it would meet 100% of the STIG, without requireing seperate 3rd party servers as even Win mobile does (and also would not require the named-in-the-STIG 3rd party client license to install on the phone costing $49 each).
Hm. Thanks for the data. I was under the impression from my host folks that they had Z/VM installed inside Z/OS as well as LPAR'd off. I'll follow up with them and get better educated.
unfortunately, I'm hands-off from the host. I'm in the anylist side of the house for now, and don'lt get to log in and play anymore... I just design the infrastructure on paper :(
Actually, I use the screensaver set to a couple minutes to keep prying eyes off my screen when i have to turn around and talk to someone, PM kicks in when idle, which if it's doing something like ripping a DVD or downloading ISOs it's not, and I'd prefer not to lock the machine every time I step away from the desk (as that also places my chat windows in Away, but the screen saver does not).
Win95 had issues with networking, and didn't run anything resembling a modern browser. Also, it's 2GB partition size disk limit was a real PITA... I actually prefered NT 3.51 to it except the fact the Win9x GUI was obviously better, and 3.51 was a MUCH slimmer OS and games that ran in DOS mode were still compatible with it.
That said, thanks for the nice comment.
ME had memory leaks, and could crash, especially if you lacked enough RAM, or were missing hardware based controllers for sound, video, and CD ROM. However, if you used parts from the microsoft HCL for ME, problems were few, so long as you rebooted it regularly. (which 95 and 98 also had big memory management issues for power users, the best thing about Win2K was you could run it a week without a reboot!).