In the immediate, yes. However I suspect dozens more will follow them upon realizing that the company endorses firing people via e-mail using a form letter. It's a universally bad sign when a company has streamlined it's firing process to that degree.
Perhaps you didn't already know this but most companies over 10 people will have a form for terminating people. They'll have a form for hiring people, promoting people, pay rises and what not. You just dont see it because your boss does it all for you.
I'd be quite concerned if any company didn't have a standardised form for termination, it'll have a long list of things you need to do before that employee leaves the building such as locking his account, collecting company property, keys and security passes as well as client access. Yes amongst this will be a standardised letter informing the now ex-employee his services will no longer be required, why and what his severance package will be. Most companies will use a form letter as it will be phrased to reduce their legal liability (yes, people sue quite often for wrongful termination).
I think you're confusing libertarian and anarchist. (common misconception)
No, he's not.
Libertarianism is just a facade for either anarchy (no laws) or facsims (corporate laws). Take your pick, but either way libertarianism is a failure and only ends up as a failed state or corporate state. The idea that government can be weaker then individuals yet stronger then corporations is akin to the idea that we'll fall off the edge of the earth.
Libertarianism will fail for the same reason Stalin's regime failed and Pol Pot's regime failed. They require everyone to believe in exactly the same thing and willingly follow the rules established by that society. Pol Pot and Stalin had to imprison and murder thousands (millions in the case of Pol Pot) to keep their societies working and they both eventually failed.
According to the license agreement one game purchase is one license so according to Ubisoft in order for your wife or children to play the game you have to buy a separate copy for them.
It's the case for consoles too, except they cant enforce it, same as PC.
One console, one game one user. This is why Microsoft limits DLC to one user account yet encourages you to create a user account for each person. How long until activation is mandatory on consoles... I'll give you a clue, it's already being built into the next generation.
I don't have a problem with paying $60-70 for a game. Have been happy to purchase at that price point for quite a few years. The problem is that brand new games here in Australia come out at $100, often up to $180 for a collectors edition, and that, I do have a problem with paying.
I also expect that a game I spend a decent amount of money on can be played by me, or my wife, or my kids. You have no idea how pissed off at Ubisoft I was when the DLC for Assassins Creed Brotherhood came out and was tied to the one xbox 360 account which initially downloaded it - my wife's account - and that I couldn't play the DLC without re-purchasing it.
According to the license agreement one game purchase is one license so according to Ubisoft in order for your wife or children to play the game you have to buy a separate copy for them. The only defence you have in this is that they can't enforce this license agreement.
But given Ubi's stance on DRM I won't be buying from them again.
BTW PC games are a bit cheaper at only A$70-80 but from the UK they are £30 which is only A$40-50. Guess if I import or buy them locally.
Pretty much this. In most cases the weakest link is between keyboard and chair and chain is as strong as its weakest link.
Except that its worse, Mac users have been told they a automagically protected from all bad tuning just by using a Mac. It's not just security by obscurity, it's security by sticking your head in the sand.
some guy somewhere is saying "WOW... Honey, look at what this guy built in his garage for $150,000" and his wife/girlfriend/significant other is yelling "AND ONE DIVORCE!!!!"
And one bloke with a 737 in is garage is saying "it was a bloody good trade".
Sort of like Samsung saying "how about we do away with this lawsuit and just discount price of the massive amount of memory you're buying from us?"
Samsung is a big company. The Samsung vice president of memory would tell the Samsung vice president of tablet design to f*** off if he were asked to sell memory to Apple cheaper. That's _his_ profit and _his_ bonus on the line, and he won't give that up because some other vice president had to produce a tablet design that gets them sued.
This,
Both would be under the same banner, Samsung Electronics so they'd be under the same C level execs who would tell both sides to fuck such a deal off.
These talks are happning because Apple has realised it cant win in court. They've tried all kinds of legal tricks to get injunctions but none of them worked. The Galaxy tab sold well and Apple failed in stopping it. These talks are Apple asking Samsung nicely not to crush them in the courtroom. Apple did the same thing with Nokia in it's patent suit. On the eve of getting crushed by Nokia in the courtroom Apple agreed to settle out of court.
It's pretty common for corporations to do this. One side realises that it cant win in court so it negotiates for a lesser penalty then the court would impose.
I hope that this is a sign that saner heads are starting to prevail now that they no longer have an ego-maniac at the helm.
Not really, it's a sign that someone at Apple has realised that they have no case against Samsung. They never really did, Apple was hoping to cause enough delay and interference that Samsung would give up (Dear Fanboys, remember that Apple did not ask for license fees from Samsung like most patent disputes, they sought injunctions to prevent Samsung from selling their products and that Apple struck first). A poor gambit that failed miserably.
Now they are appealing to Samsung not to crush them in the legal system. Samsung will likely not pursue them legally as it's more expensive and Samsung is a rational corporation.
I still cannot understand why very technical inventions (such as 3G and GSM) can only be licensed under FRAND conditions, but fluff like 'slide to unlock' (have that in my toilet) or rounded corner ("they are everywhere!") yield massive license income.. I would really love to see this before a judge so we can finally get this mess cleaned up for good.
Rather, why is software able to be patented at all?
You cant patent 2+2=4 because anyone can figure that out, same with software. Someone with no exposure to your software, with the same goal is likely to figure out the same way to do it if it is the most logical conclusion, same as 2+2=4.
But this is Apple more or less admitting it has no real case and stands to have more damage done to it by fighting Samsung. Their attempts to get injunctions have failed, the Galaxy brand has gone gangbusters, Apple lost and are looking for the cheapest way out..
So you are saying he was not talking about all of the things that make his argument look ridiculous and self-serving. Check. Since Facebook does not even make an OS, I suggest you are simply full of crap trying to defend the indefensible.
Ridiculous and self serving?
Add non-sensical to that description and you've pretty much described your own post.
Neither I nor the GP mentioned facebook, we were discussing Apple specifically. I don't think you actually read either my nor the GP's posts as your post make absolutely no sense and it seems you're making things up to attack someone because what they have said doesn't fit into your warped view of reality.
I believe this is the point that Sergey was making. He isnt talking about Googles search engine or online services, but the Android OS vs Apples OS
I believe Penny Arcade said it best.. context is important.
I have two 54G's: one is my house NAT/firewall/router, and the other runs in bridged mode to provide WiFi to the opposite end of the house. They're great little units! But the lure of the Airport Extreme with it's simultaneous b/g/n support and generally very nice specs was too strong to pass up.
Asus have a unit that has BGN support, as does Netgear.
Apple is worse than Microsoft ever was. And I am no fan of Microsoft.
But worse at what? The article title mentions that it is in regards to "internet freedom". From this perspective there is no comparing Apple to Microsoft - Apple pushes for standards and Microsoft attempted to lock users to Internet Explorer based technologies. Remember the days before OSX and Firefox - one would constantly run into sites that required IE and Windows.
It's so cute you believe that. Apple is trying to do the exact same thing as Microsoft, trying to shoehorn everyone into using their standards, h.264 which Apple owns a lot of patents on, Apples version of HTML5 and so forth. The only difference is instead of just forcing their customers to use their products and their protocols _ONLY_ they are trying to force the IEEE to make their protocols standard for everyone.
In that regard, Apple is worse then Microsoft ever were.
I'm not going to try to defend Apple with regards to other issues, but you really can't compare them to Microsoft wrt "internet freedom". Microsoft is the only company I can think of that actually tried to monopolize the internet.
No you cant compare Microsoft to Apple on "Internet Freedom".
Microsoft has never tried to control everyone by putting them in a walled garden.
MS never tried to control the Internet, only try to make everyone use Windows and IE (which everyone does, right, no one uses Firefox or Chrome, right). Apple is trying to control the Internet by saying "No, you can never have flash, ogg or WebM on our platforms, you MUST use OUR protocols and ONLY our protocols". Windows has always allowed you to run whatever you wanted, even when it was against Microsoft's best interests.
MS is evil, but evil entirely as a side effect of their unbridled greed. If giving out flowers and saving kittens was highly profitable, Microsoft would be the foremost floral distributor and feline retrieval company in the world. Apple is evil at the core and cares for nothing else but control over everything you do.
Turns out Airport is not a router, but a sort of wireless switch (no modem).
Your terminology is not quite standard.
So this is probably another speed optimization as packets are 96bit smaller and your home network probably isn't filled with more than 4294967296 devices.
My comparatively ancient and underpowered WRT54G manages IPv6 just fine.
But more to the point, the Airport Extreme itself is perfectly capable of routing IPv6, so your point is moot. It's just that IPv6 support is no longer included in the configuration utility.
I dont deal with Apple equipment for a variety of reasons but...
Does it not have a WAN port? Then IPv6 routing may very well be required of it. In Australia, Fibre connections come out of a NTU (Network Termination Unit) as an ethernet cable and expect a Layer 3 device. IPv6 support will be required for the WAN connection despite there only being 2 or 3 devices on the LAN side of things.
That old Linksys WRT54G (yep, I have one too, fantastic little routers) is fine for connecting up to an NTU.
Mac users need to stop running their day-to-day stuff under Administrator accounts. Create a new account (if your account is "joe", call this new one "joe_admin"); give it admin permissions; make sure you can log in with it; then (and ONLY then!) remove the admin permissions from your personal account. And then... keep using the same account you've always been using.
Mac Users put things like this in the "too hard" basket, Macs are simple, easy to use and Automagically Secure(TM) and how dare you suggest they do something as complex and take responsibility for themselves. Who do you think they are, Windows users.
Funny how Americans think that since breaking Enigma helped them win the WW2 so much, they are entitled to have the same advantage over the wole world now.
Umm... that movie where US troops secured the vital Enigma machine wasn't actually accurate. It was the Brits who stole the intact Enigma and the brightest of the Brits who cracked the code and, to a large extent, helped them win the war. (OK, having a whole lot of US planes and bombs and ships and tanks and stuff to DO something with the intercepted data was also quite significant, but the intelligence side of things was all down to the Poms.)
Yes,
The Polish had broken the code used in 1928, but by 1938 the Nazi's added 2 extra wheels.
The first enigma machines and code books were captured by a British commando raid in march 4 1941 but these were the codes for German home waters only.
On 9 May, an enigma machine and more importantly the military code books were captured when a British Destroyer HMS Bulldog depth charged U-110 and forced it to surface. The radio operator did not destroy the code books. These code books provided the big breakthrough in breaking enigma.
Even JN-25, where most of the US cryptanalytic talent was focused received significant help from Australian, Dutch and British cryptanalysts (Hut 7 at Bletchly Park was dedicated to Japanese Naval codes).
It isn't that Australians want to keep their data in Australia so much as they're being told that remote storage--especially in the US--is risky. And they're right. The US just doesn't want people to know this and the last thing they want is people from Australia's Ministry of Defense running around and telling people this.
I wish I could credit Australian CEO's and Australian government organisations with that much intellect and common sense but the sad fact is that the 75 ms lag between the US and Australia would cause just about everything to slow down. "Cloud" services in the US are too slow to be usable in Australia. 75ms is the theoretical time to cross from Sydney to LA, lag in reality is much greater. Want to play a game on US servers, 250 ms pings at best. Sucks when there are no Australian servers.
So it's more about "lost productivity" then security.
BTW, the Ministry of Defence is not worried, we all know that the CIA gets it's info from CNN.
No, the DOJ action is not about ebooks costing more than paper books, or even that the cost of ebooks is 'too high'. The DOJ action is about Apple conspiring with the publishers to ensure that Apple does not have to compete with anyone on price. That is illegal.
This, apple collided with publishers to ensure that other stores could not sell the same book for less then what apple was selling them for. Its not about the cost of books although a common side effect of collusion and price fixing is that prices for the product rise.
To carry the analogy further, there is no immune system evolution in the Mac ecosystem, and what exists are usually exact genetic clones.
In the biological world, this is a species extinction event waiting to happen.
Worse than that, OSX has effectively lived in a hermetically sealed and sterilized environment. This means the immune system has not learned any immunity and cannot respond to infections effectively.
All three consoles have an online store for downloadable games, apps, etc.
Microsoft charges for XBox Live Gold. They've had other avenues for profit during this entire generation.
Amongst all of this, it took MS years to get back into the black where as Nintendo started making money from the word go.
Console hardware as a loss leader is a failed business model. People who buy consoles are casual gamers, even PS3 fanboys love to point out that a lot of people bought PS3's simply because they were (at the time) cheap Blu-Ray players and not to play games on. Producing another generation of overpowered and overpriced loss leaders will only result in Sony and/or MS departing the console market.
There aren't enough "hardcore" console players to keep a "hardcore" market afloat, let alone competitive. Nintendo saw this when they made the Wii, justified when the Wii made money hand over fist whilst Microsoft and Sony struggled to stop haemorrhaging money on hardware. Hardcore is going back to the PC, even console rock star dev Cliff Bleszinski sees this. Meanwhile, Nintendo is releasing another casual console, whilst I think the Wii U will perform poorly against the meteoric performance of the Wii, the Wii U will still make a lot of money for Nintendo. I think the disparity is due mostly to the fact that the worlds economies are not as good as they were in 2008 and the Wii U is more evolutionary then revolutionary like the Wii was.
I'm 31, and your response honestly reminded me of this.
OK, that gave me a laugh.
BTW, I'm 30 so I'm not that young. I just realise that games haven't reached the level of acceptance that TV has. Go back 20-30 years and TV had the same arguments rallied against it. They were without merit then and are just as merit-less now. Give it another 5-10 years when the median age of gamers is approaching 40 and games will be as accepted as TV.
Because people over 35 haven't played games as a kid.
People like you are the cause of the problem, politicians generalise like you and think only kids play computer games so there is no need for 18+ computer game rating.
Get off my nature strip as well.
People like you are the problem.
People who need to make up things to support a flawed conclusion.
Where did I say gaming was for kids?
Where did I say I was against the 18+ rating?
Nowhere, that's where.
What I said was that they didn't grow up with that technology in their lives. I know better then most the median age of a gamer in Australia is 30-32.
The problem is that games are going through an age old cycle, the older generation does not attach any significance to the culture the younger generation grew up with. For fucks sake the same thing happened with comics, rock music, television, et al... All of these went through periods of rejection until the generation who grew up with them gets old enough and they go through a period of acceptance. That is exactly what is happening with games.
So in future, kindly quote what I said, not what you would have liked me to say so you could attack me thank you very much.
Slashdot Mirror
It will now be two people leaving the company!
In the immediate, yes. However I suspect dozens more will follow them upon realizing that the company endorses firing people via e-mail using a form letter. It's a universally bad sign when a company has streamlined it's firing process to that degree.
Perhaps you didn't already know this but most companies over 10 people will have a form for terminating people. They'll have a form for hiring people, promoting people, pay rises and what not. You just dont see it because your boss does it all for you.
I'd be quite concerned if any company didn't have a standardised form for termination, it'll have a long list of things you need to do before that employee leaves the building such as locking his account, collecting company property, keys and security passes as well as client access. Yes amongst this will be a standardised letter informing the now ex-employee his services will no longer be required, why and what his severance package will be. Most companies will use a form letter as it will be phrased to reduce their legal liability (yes, people sue quite often for wrongful termination).
It's the case for consoles too [...] One console, one game one user.
Tell that to my copy of Super Smash Bros. Brawl: $12.50 per player at launch.
By giving a per player cost, you pretty much prove my point.
Back to the OP's example of activating DLC on his wifes account, that's a pretty clear indication of the one player, one game policy.
I think you're confusing libertarian and anarchist. (common misconception)
No, he's not.
Libertarianism is just a facade for either anarchy (no laws) or facsims (corporate laws). Take your pick, but either way libertarianism is a failure and only ends up as a failed state or corporate state. The idea that government can be weaker then individuals yet stronger then corporations is akin to the idea that we'll fall off the edge of the earth.
Libertarianism will fail for the same reason Stalin's regime failed and Pol Pot's regime failed. They require everyone to believe in exactly the same thing and willingly follow the rules established by that society. Pol Pot and Stalin had to imprison and murder thousands (millions in the case of Pol Pot) to keep their societies working and they both eventually failed.
According to the license agreement one game purchase is one license so according to Ubisoft in order for your wife or children to play the game you have to buy a separate copy for them.
That's been the case for the vast majority of multiplayer PC games for years: one PC, monitor, and license key per player, no split-screen, no spawn installation.
It's the case for consoles too, except they cant enforce it, same as PC.
One console, one game one user. This is why Microsoft limits DLC to one user account yet encourages you to create a user account for each person. How long until activation is mandatory on consoles... I'll give you a clue, it's already being built into the next generation.
I don't have a problem with paying $60-70 for a game. Have been happy to purchase at that price point for quite a few years. The problem is that brand new games here in Australia come out at $100, often up to $180 for a collectors edition, and that, I do have a problem with paying.
I also expect that a game I spend a decent amount of money on can be played by me, or my wife, or my kids. You have no idea how pissed off at Ubisoft I was when the DLC for Assassins Creed Brotherhood came out and was tied to the one xbox 360 account which initially downloaded it - my wife's account - and that I couldn't play the DLC without re-purchasing it.
According to the license agreement one game purchase is one license so according to Ubisoft in order for your wife or children to play the game you have to buy a separate copy for them. The only defence you have in this is that they can't enforce this license agreement.
But given Ubi's stance on DRM I won't be buying from them again.
BTW PC games are a bit cheaper at only A$70-80 but from the UK they are £30 which is only A$40-50. Guess if I import or buy them locally.
Pretty much this. In most cases the weakest link is between keyboard and chair and chain is as strong as its weakest link.
Except that its worse, Mac users have been told they a automagically protected from all bad tuning just by using a Mac. It's not just security by obscurity, it's security by sticking your head in the sand.
some guy somewhere is saying "WOW... Honey, look at what this guy built in his garage for $150,000" and his wife/girlfriend/significant other is yelling "AND ONE DIVORCE!!!!"
And one bloke with a 737 in is garage is saying "it was a bloody good trade".
Sort of like Samsung saying "how about we do away with this lawsuit and just discount price of the massive amount of memory you're buying from us?"
Samsung is a big company. The Samsung vice president of memory would tell the Samsung vice president of tablet design to f*** off if he were asked to sell memory to Apple cheaper. That's _his_ profit and _his_ bonus on the line, and he won't give that up because some other vice president had to produce a tablet design that gets them sued.
This, Both would be under the same banner, Samsung Electronics so they'd be under the same C level execs who would tell both sides to fuck such a deal off.
These talks are happning because Apple has realised it cant win in court. They've tried all kinds of legal tricks to get injunctions but none of them worked. The Galaxy tab sold well and Apple failed in stopping it. These talks are Apple asking Samsung nicely not to crush them in the courtroom. Apple did the same thing with Nokia in it's patent suit. On the eve of getting crushed by Nokia in the courtroom Apple agreed to settle out of court.
It's pretty common for corporations to do this. One side realises that it cant win in court so it negotiates for a lesser penalty then the court would impose.
I hope that this is a sign that saner heads are starting to prevail now that they no longer have an ego-maniac at the helm.
Not really, it's a sign that someone at Apple has realised that they have no case against Samsung. They never really did, Apple was hoping to cause enough delay and interference that Samsung would give up (Dear Fanboys, remember that Apple did not ask for license fees from Samsung like most patent disputes, they sought injunctions to prevent Samsung from selling their products and that Apple struck first). A poor gambit that failed miserably.
Now they are appealing to Samsung not to crush them in the legal system. Samsung will likely not pursue them legally as it's more expensive and Samsung is a rational corporation.
I still cannot understand why very technical inventions (such as 3G and GSM) can only be licensed under FRAND conditions, but fluff like 'slide to unlock' (have that in my toilet) or rounded corner ("they are everywhere!") yield massive license income.. I would really love to see this before a judge so we can finally get this mess cleaned up for good.
Rather, why is software able to be patented at all?
You cant patent 2+2=4 because anyone can figure that out, same with software. Someone with no exposure to your software, with the same goal is likely to figure out the same way to do it if it is the most logical conclusion, same as 2+2=4.
But this is Apple more or less admitting it has no real case and stands to have more damage done to it by fighting Samsung. Their attempts to get injunctions have failed, the Galaxy brand has gone gangbusters, Apple lost and are looking for the cheapest way out..
So you are saying he was not talking about all of the things that make his argument look ridiculous and self-serving. Check. Since Facebook does not even make an OS, I suggest you are simply full of crap trying to defend the indefensible.
Ridiculous and self serving?
Add non-sensical to that description and you've pretty much described your own post.
Neither I nor the GP mentioned facebook, we were discussing Apple specifically. I don't think you actually read either my nor the GP's posts as your post make absolutely no sense and it seems you're making things up to attack someone because what they have said doesn't fit into your warped view of reality.
I suggest you increase your medication.
I believe this is the point that Sergey was making. He isnt talking about Googles search engine or online services, but the Android OS vs Apples OS I believe Penny Arcade said it best.. context is important.
I was making a joke... But I see your point.
I have two 54G's: one is my house NAT/firewall/router, and the other runs in bridged mode to provide WiFi to the opposite end of the house. They're great little units! But the lure of the Airport Extreme with it's simultaneous b/g/n support and generally very nice specs was too strong to pass up.
Asus have a unit that has BGN support, as does Netgear.
Apple is worse than Microsoft ever was. And I am no fan of Microsoft.
But worse at what? The article title mentions that it is in regards to "internet freedom". From this perspective there is no comparing Apple to Microsoft - Apple pushes for standards and Microsoft attempted to lock users to Internet Explorer based technologies. Remember the days before OSX and Firefox - one would constantly run into sites that required IE and Windows.
It's so cute you believe that. Apple is trying to do the exact same thing as Microsoft, trying to shoehorn everyone into using their standards, h.264 which Apple owns a lot of patents on, Apples version of HTML5 and so forth. The only difference is instead of just forcing their customers to use their products and their protocols _ONLY_ they are trying to force the IEEE to make their protocols standard for everyone.
In that regard, Apple is worse then Microsoft ever were.
I'm not going to try to defend Apple with regards to other issues, but you really can't compare them to Microsoft wrt "internet freedom". Microsoft is the only company I can think of that actually tried to monopolize the internet.
No you cant compare Microsoft to Apple on "Internet Freedom".
Microsoft has never tried to control everyone by putting them in a walled garden.
MS never tried to control the Internet, only try to make everyone use Windows and IE (which everyone does, right, no one uses Firefox or Chrome, right). Apple is trying to control the Internet by saying "No, you can never have flash, ogg or WebM on our platforms, you MUST use OUR protocols and ONLY our protocols". Windows has always allowed you to run whatever you wanted, even when it was against Microsoft's best interests.
MS is evil, but evil entirely as a side effect of their unbridled greed. If giving out flowers and saving kittens was highly profitable, Microsoft would be the foremost floral distributor and feline retrieval company in the world. Apple is evil at the core and cares for nothing else but control over everything you do.
Not to put too fine a point on it, but a coercive monopoly with guns is far worse than a mere merchant with a huge market share.
So when Apple starts selling the iGun, we should all be very afraid?
Not really,
It'll only fire expensive iBullets, can only fire one at a time before needing to be reloaded and iMagazines cannot be changed by the user.
Turns out Airport is not a router, but a sort of wireless switch (no modem).
Your terminology is not quite standard.
So this is probably another speed optimization as packets are 96bit smaller and your home network probably isn't filled with more than 4294967296 devices.
My comparatively ancient and underpowered WRT54G manages IPv6 just fine.
But more to the point, the Airport Extreme itself is perfectly capable of routing IPv6, so your point is moot. It's just that IPv6 support is no longer included in the configuration utility.
I dont deal with Apple equipment for a variety of reasons but... Does it not have a WAN port? Then IPv6 routing may very well be required of it. In Australia, Fibre connections come out of a NTU (Network Termination Unit) as an ethernet cable and expect a Layer 3 device. IPv6 support will be required for the WAN connection despite there only being 2 or 3 devices on the LAN side of things.
That old Linksys WRT54G (yep, I have one too, fantastic little routers) is fine for connecting up to an NTU.
Mac users need to stop running their day-to-day stuff under Administrator accounts. Create a new account (if your account is "joe", call this new one "joe_admin"); give it admin permissions; make sure you can log in with it; then (and ONLY then!) remove the admin permissions from your personal account. And then... keep using the same account you've always been using.
Mac Users put things like this in the "too hard" basket, Macs are simple, easy to use and Automagically Secure(TM) and how dare you suggest they do something as complex and take responsibility for themselves. Who do you think they are, Windows users.
We at Anheuser-Busch Companies, Inc. refer to exactly this policy as "getting free inventory".
Non American customers of Anheuser-Busch refer to this product as Budweiser.
Funny how Americans think that since breaking Enigma helped them win the WW2 so much, they are entitled to have the same advantage over the wole world now.
Umm... that movie where US troops secured the vital Enigma machine wasn't actually accurate. It was the Brits who stole the intact Enigma and the brightest of the Brits who cracked the code and, to a large extent, helped them win the war. (OK, having a whole lot of US planes and bombs and ships and tanks and stuff to DO something with the intercepted data was also quite significant, but the intelligence side of things was all down to the Poms.)
Yes,
The Polish had broken the code used in 1928, but by 1938 the Nazi's added 2 extra wheels.
The first enigma machines and code books were captured by a British commando raid in march 4 1941 but these were the codes for German home waters only.
On 9 May, an enigma machine and more importantly the military code books were captured when a British Destroyer HMS Bulldog depth charged U-110 and forced it to surface. The radio operator did not destroy the code books. These code books provided the big breakthrough in breaking enigma.
Even JN-25, where most of the US cryptanalytic talent was focused received significant help from Australian, Dutch and British cryptanalysts (Hut 7 at Bletchly Park was dedicated to Japanese Naval codes).
It isn't that Australians want to keep their data in Australia so much as they're being told that remote storage--especially in the US--is risky. And they're right. The US just doesn't want people to know this and the last thing they want is people from Australia's Ministry of Defense running around and telling people this.
I wish I could credit Australian CEO's and Australian government organisations with that much intellect and common sense but the sad fact is that the 75 ms lag between the US and Australia would cause just about everything to slow down. "Cloud" services in the US are too slow to be usable in Australia. 75ms is the theoretical time to cross from Sydney to LA, lag in reality is much greater. Want to play a game on US servers, 250 ms pings at best. Sucks when there are no Australian servers.
So it's more about "lost productivity" then security.
BTW, the Ministry of Defence is not worried, we all know that the CIA gets it's info from CNN.
No, the DOJ action is not about ebooks costing more than paper books, or even that the cost of ebooks is 'too high'. The DOJ action is about Apple conspiring with the publishers to ensure that Apple does not have to compete with anyone on price. That is illegal.
This, apple collided with publishers to ensure that other stores could not sell the same book for less then what apple was selling them for. Its not about the cost of books although a common side effect of collusion and price fixing is that prices for the product rise.
To carry the analogy further, there is no immune system evolution in the Mac ecosystem, and what exists are usually exact genetic clones.
In the biological world, this is a species extinction event waiting to happen.
Worse than that, OSX has effectively lived in a hermetically sealed and sterilized environment. This means the immune system has not learned any immunity and cannot respond to infections effectively.
All three consoles have an online store for downloadable games, apps, etc.
Microsoft charges for XBox Live Gold. They've had other avenues for profit during this entire generation.
Amongst all of this, it took MS years to get back into the black where as Nintendo started making money from the word go.
Console hardware as a loss leader is a failed business model. People who buy consoles are casual gamers, even PS3 fanboys love to point out that a lot of people bought PS3's simply because they were (at the time) cheap Blu-Ray players and not to play games on. Producing another generation of overpowered and overpriced loss leaders will only result in Sony and/or MS departing the console market.
There aren't enough "hardcore" console players to keep a "hardcore" market afloat, let alone competitive. Nintendo saw this when they made the Wii, justified when the Wii made money hand over fist whilst Microsoft and Sony struggled to stop haemorrhaging money on hardware. Hardcore is going back to the PC, even console rock star dev Cliff Bleszinski sees this. Meanwhile, Nintendo is releasing another casual console, whilst I think the Wii U will perform poorly against the meteoric performance of the Wii, the Wii U will still make a lot of money for Nintendo. I think the disparity is due mostly to the fact that the worlds economies are not as good as they were in 2008 and the Wii U is more evolutionary then revolutionary like the Wii was.
I'm 31, and your response honestly reminded me of this.
OK, that gave me a laugh.
BTW, I'm 30 so I'm not that young. I just realise that games haven't reached the level of acceptance that TV has. Go back 20-30 years and TV had the same arguments rallied against it. They were without merit then and are just as merit-less now. Give it another 5-10 years when the median age of gamers is approaching 40 and games will be as accepted as TV.
Because people over 35 haven't played games as a kid.
People like you are the cause of the problem, politicians generalise like you and think only kids play computer games so there is no need for 18+ computer game rating.
Get off my nature strip as well.
People like you are the problem.
People who need to make up things to support a flawed conclusion.
Where did I say gaming was for kids?
Where did I say I was against the 18+ rating?
Nowhere, that's where.
What I said was that they didn't grow up with that technology in their lives. I know better then most the median age of a gamer in Australia is 30-32.
The problem is that games are going through an age old cycle, the older generation does not attach any significance to the culture the younger generation grew up with. For fucks sake the same thing happened with comics, rock music, television, et al... All of these went through periods of rejection until the generation who grew up with them gets old enough and they go through a period of acceptance. That is exactly what is happening with games.
So in future, kindly quote what I said, not what you would have liked me to say so you could attack me thank you very much.
Now kindly get off my 8 bit lawn.