Apple may be able to get away with punking people who hacked their phones and updated. But they're trying to deny warranty service on hardware issues for people who didn't iBrick with 1.1.1. If someone totes in a hacked 1.0.2 with a bad screen/speaker/etc, and there's no concrete evidence it was third party software, then Apple denying warranty service at that point seems to (ianal) open them to liability.
Add to that opening a lot of justified vitriol, and I smell another lawsuit coming.
There are a number of unpatched vulnerabilities, including the ability to execute arbitrary commands over bluetooth, in 1.0.2, or that'd be fine. I'm sitting on an at&t-locked but jailbroken 1.0.2 and I have the 1.0.2 restore firmware saved. So if need be, I can restore to stock 1.0.2 and then upgrade. But a co-worker - who is ALSO on AT&T - used the simfree hack just to see it in action. It's not going to be nice if he gets punked just for playing with the phone.
Caveat Emptor and all with respect to the hacks, sure... but when Apple begins punishing it's biggest fans with intentionally punitive updates, it deserves what it gets - kicked into the dustbin of computing history.
Apple encrypted their firmware to make hacking it harder.
Here's a better analogy:
You buy a brand new Chevy. You decide the chevy engine blows, so you put in a Ford engine. A few weeks later you take it by the Chevy dealer because they say there's a glitch in your stereo. You turn it in, and when you come to pick it up, they give you a bag of shit.
I'll chime in here too. I've had hiring reqs open for months, and after seeing dozens of candidates, I've found one guy who we liked enough to let him work part time (then sold him on stepping up), and one very smart but inexperienced kid.
We tried to outsource some work, too, because we couldn't hire enough people fast enough. Again, very difficult. I chowed through at least a half dozen outsourced programming outfits who could not program their way out of a wet paper bag to get a contract. One person delivered me code that literally crashed on running on a small data set; and I had speced out the ability to handle 10 million database entries. (Insert joke here about running the universe down to complete entropy before the test completes) We did finally find an outfit that seemed capable, but because they're not programming a solution in a vacuum (requirement: has to integrate with our platform), they're running way over the timeline.
I'm sure it depends on a lot on location, skill sets, and so on; but it seems to me like there are a lot more things worthy of programming time than there are programmers, and that will probably continue.
The point is, however, that with all the additional features of D2 that sorting by score isn't necessary.
Define necessary. It wasn't necessary before, in the sense you could still find and read each comment if you wanted to. But a bunch of people noticed the feature was gone and miss it. I guess there's always D1. D1 with sort > D2, to me. If D1 is gone, there's always not bothering visiting the first place; go rss readers.
Google is doing the right thing. Do you think the RIAA or even Apple would? I think not. Just because Google sets a good example doesn't mean everyone will follow; I'd read those terms and conditions carefully, because I expect most of the drm-laden crap you buy has escape hatches in case of emergency built into the T&C so they don't have to refund jack.
Or they like their sort pref to be respected? I must be missing the obvious. D2 ignores my preference to have highest rated comments first. How do I get D2 to change the sort order?
We make sure that all our investors (current and future) understand that the freedom of our software is vital to the success of MySQL. We also try to be open about everything else: bugs, plans, events, etc. But here we also know there will be something of a difference when going public: we will have to abide strictly by SEC rules and not disclose financial or other vital business information in any other way than publicly to everyone at given points in time.
By discouraging people from getting and using the Enterprise version, I feel less and less safe deploying it myself. Less users = less chances to catch problems. Less code = less review = less security.
I'm about to deploy 4 MySQL servers for some serious volume and was strongly considering buying into an enterprise package, largely on the strength of their monitoring tool, but now I'm seriously thinking it's time to try Postgres.
The dotcom bubble burst hard and bad because VC invested en masse in a bevy of tech companies, and they all used each other as vendors/clients/customers. When the VC $ dried up, those without sufficient external revenue sources bombed. As far as I know, this is just not happening now. Additionally, commodities like bandwidth, colo space, etc, are now FAR, FAR more competitive than they ever were in the 1.0 days. (You can get ~tier one bandwidth at $1000 for 100/Mbps measured 90/10, wow). That and Google has made a lot more "ideas" feasible because they're a lot better at monetizing page views. Servers are far cheaper.
Web 2.0 is software as a service, done piece by piece. Software isn't going away. The Internet isn't going away. So the platform may change, but software as a service delivered over the net isn't going anywhere.
If policeware gets a free pass to do things that, done by other parties, would be considered "malicious", then other malware will quickly begin to disguise itself as policeware to avoid detection.
AT&T is like the RIAA of telecommunications: always behind the times, never wanting to change their business model, always trying to monopolize something.
AT&T also said an open-access network would deprive AT&T of billions of dollars, and encourage the growth of wireless broadband in the country
As nasty as avsforum is, it's actually hugely informative and packed with people who love nothing more than to play with high-end AV stuff. I found it totally invaluable looking into projectors, audio systems, and HTPC solutions for my basement theater.
BD+, unlike AACS, which suffered a partial hack last year, won't likely be breached for 10 years. So what he's saying is, if I'm a consumer, HD-DVD is better for me, if I don't like vendors telling me how I can view content I buy?
You're not a lawyer, but you play one on Slashdot?
Give me a break.
Napster facilitated infringement, because it built lists of files people had available for transfer and facilitated connections between users, and made them searchable. Napster HAD a substantial noninfringing use, and that's where intent came in; courts believed that Napster was intended to facilitate infringement.
This file stripping does not facilitate file trading. You can already trade the file just as easily without stripping atoms which would identify you. The fact that stripping atoms anonymizes files, making it harder to hold someone accountable for placing the files on a P2P network is incredibly peripheral compared to Napster, which was a tool specifically built to enable people to index and copy files efficiently.
It's also fairly irrelevent whether these files find their way onto P2P networks; they're almost certainly all there. As long as CDs are sold, their contents will be on P2P networks.
Forcing my own hardware to restrict what I do? check. Burning huge amounts of cpu and ram to restrict what I do? check. Not getting adopted, ever? check.
Fearghus is a good person to be talking about this, since his Obsidian Studios is the developer of NWN2 and its upcoming expansion.
NWN and NWN2 are games designed with multiplayer in mind. The original spawned hundreds, if not thousands, of "persistent worlds", which were mini-MMOs. Some linked servers ended up supporting hundreds of simultaneous players, and individual popular servers handled 50-95 simultaneous users, often stopping only at the limit of the hardware and the engine (as an NWN PW developer, and experienced sysadmin, it seemed very much to me that the engine had some sort of O(n squared) cost associated with users; going from 1 to 35 would barely dent a server, but going 35 to 55 could bring the same server practically to its knees).
Imagine if WoW supported user mods. There could be an "official server" and any number of player servers. The people setting up a player server could allow a player joining there to import their character in from the official server (not the other way around, of course). The people on the player servers would start with a base world, but have tools to add, remove, and modify the content. Add in a scripting language and a way to distribute customized art assets (models, animations, etc), and you have something like Quake 3 w/autodownload, but applied to an RPG instead of an FPS.
Bioware began to hook into another possibility when they started offering their "digital distribution" modules for NWN. For some small amount ($4-$12 depending on the module), you got an add-on game experience for NWN; a sort of new official campaign to play through. Imagine if a game like NWN or NWN2 had an "NWN live" service you could subscribe to. You pay $8 a month or something, and it gives you access to some cooler online features, as well as content updates. New models, new portraits, new adventures, etc. Bioware seemed to indicate they were pleasantly surprised with the reception of DD modules for NWN1.
One of the things about NWN and its expansions was that each expansion featured a bunch of new things (new classes, support for prestige classes, new models, new spells, new voices, new vfx and sfx). These were featured in a new official campaign adventure - one you could play through - but they were also remixable into a lot of new user adventures, and also could be combined with custom content for more possibilities. And a nice toolset to tie it all together.
A game that was gorgeous and easy to use and fun like City of Heroes could have reached its true potential with a scripting language and a toolset and a way to use that end-user content, because hobby content creators would have come up with enough refreshing content to avoid the "gets dull" label CoH earned for its repetitive missions.
It really depends. This is true in a lot of cases and it has nothing to do with lawsuits when it is the PWG (proverbial white guy) -- it's because some companies will actually challenge unemployment claims. In some states, at least - in Texas, for example - your unemployment "insurance" rate is based on how much is paid out to former employees who file. So if you let someone go without cause and they file for unemployment, you end up paying for it. If they file and you have a paper trail, you can challenge it. (In TX, the state may still pay the benefits, but they won't be counted against you; or they may reject the claim, and even demand the former employee pay back money if they already received benefits).
Corporate HR where they enforce the policy, naturally the policy will include a PIP; you can't go and set up a policy that says, "If the party is a member of a protected class, then..." But I have been at places where an ad hoc firing can and will be approved by HR, but only if the person is not in a protected class.
As a rule, companies refer all questions about former employees to HR. HR, as a rule, will only confirm stated dates of employment, title, maybe salary. Why? Anything bad they say can be construed as slander, and since your new job is on the line, the damages could be significant if slander proves to have cost you a job. They've cut their ties to you, so there's no point to them saying anything bad; it doesn't benefit them.
Some companies wlil say glowing things about someone they really liked who left by choice, and then say nothing about the others. The one negative catch phrase that has seemed to propagate is, "[Person X] is not eligible for employment" or "not eligible for re-hiring" or such, which translates into, "We wouldn't want them back", but is apparently "safe".
Also, again, firing black people isn't that easy. Anyone who's been a manager knows it can be a real bitch to get rid of an employee in any protected class - race, gender, or (in some states) sexual orientation. Firing a straight white guy is a piece of cake; any reason will do, because at-will employment means you can fire them for NO REASON. If you go to HR and tell them you want to fire the gay black woman in your group because she's been snorting coke at her desk, coming in all of 3 hours a week, and took a bat to your car when you asked her about her project, they'd probably ask you to put her on a Performance Improvement Plan for 6 weeks and issue warnings for every infraction before they'd even consider firing her.:p
That's a bit of an exaggeration, but it isn't a BIG exaggeration.
Slashdot Mirror
Apple may be able to get away with punking people who hacked their phones and updated. But they're trying to deny warranty service on hardware issues for people who didn't iBrick with 1.1.1. If someone totes in a hacked 1.0.2 with a bad screen/speaker/etc, and there's no concrete evidence it was third party software, then Apple denying warranty service at that point seems to (ianal) open them to liability.
Add to that opening a lot of justified vitriol, and I smell another lawsuit coming.
There are a number of unpatched vulnerabilities, including the ability to execute arbitrary commands over bluetooth, in 1.0.2, or that'd be fine. I'm sitting on an at&t-locked but jailbroken 1.0.2 and I have the 1.0.2 restore firmware saved. So if need be, I can restore to stock 1.0.2 and then upgrade. But a co-worker - who is ALSO on AT&T - used the simfree hack just to see it in action. It's not going to be nice if he gets punked just for playing with the phone.
Caveat Emptor and all with respect to the hacks, sure... but when Apple begins punishing it's biggest fans with intentionally punitive updates, it deserves what it gets - kicked into the dustbin of computing history.
Apple encrypted their firmware to make hacking it harder.
Here's a better analogy:
You buy a brand new Chevy. You decide the chevy engine blows, so you put in a Ford engine. A few weeks later you take it by the Chevy dealer because they say there's a glitch in your stereo. You turn it in, and when you come to pick it up, they give you a bag of shit.
Tons of reports of it on the Apple support forums, for example. I saw reports of "invalid sim", as well as a couple people who had their wifi go dead.
I hope Microsoft thinks you're right. They'll go down all the faster.
How many types of digital media aren't cracked now? Blu-ray, and...?
I was listening to the most recent virgin worlds podcast this morning (first from GDC) and it had an interview with him on it.
I'll chime in here too. I've had hiring reqs open for months, and after seeing dozens of candidates, I've found one guy who we liked enough to let him work part time (then sold him on stepping up), and one very smart but inexperienced kid.
We tried to outsource some work, too, because we couldn't hire enough people fast enough. Again, very difficult. I chowed through at least a half dozen outsourced programming outfits who could not program their way out of a wet paper bag to get a contract. One person delivered me code that literally crashed on running on a small data set; and I had speced out the ability to handle 10 million database entries. (Insert joke here about running the universe down to complete entropy before the test completes) We did finally find an outfit that seemed capable, but because they're not programming a solution in a vacuum (requirement: has to integrate with our platform), they're running way over the timeline.
I'm sure it depends on a lot on location, skill sets, and so on; but it seems to me like there are a lot more things worthy of programming time than there are programmers, and that will probably continue.
The point is, however, that with all the additional features of D2 that sorting by score isn't necessary.
Define necessary. It wasn't necessary before, in the sense you could still find and read each comment if you wanted to. But a bunch of people noticed the feature was gone and miss it. I guess there's always D1. D1 with sort > D2, to me. If D1 is gone, there's always not bothering visiting the first place; go rss readers.
Google is doing the right thing. Do you think the RIAA or even Apple would? I think not. Just because Google sets a good example doesn't mean everyone will follow; I'd read those terms and conditions carefully, because I expect most of the drm-laden crap you buy has escape hatches in case of emergency built into the T&C so they don't have to refund jack.
Anyone still running D1 is a sucker
Or they like their sort pref to be respected? I must be missing the obvious. D2 ignores my preference to have highest rated comments first. How do I get D2 to change the sort order?
From his earlier comment:
By discouraging people from getting and using the Enterprise version, I feel less and less safe deploying it myself. Less users = less chances to catch problems. Less code = less review = less security.
I'm about to deploy 4 MySQL servers for some serious volume and was strongly considering buying into an enterprise package, largely on the strength of their monitoring tool, but now I'm seriously thinking it's time to try Postgres.
The dotcom bubble burst hard and bad because VC invested en masse in a bevy of tech companies, and they all used each other as vendors/clients/customers. When the VC $ dried up, those without sufficient external revenue sources bombed. As far as I know, this is just not happening now. Additionally, commodities like bandwidth, colo space, etc, are now FAR, FAR more competitive than they ever were in the 1.0 days. (You can get ~tier one bandwidth at $1000 for 100/Mbps measured 90/10, wow). That and Google has made a lot more "ideas" feasible because they're a lot better at monetizing page views. Servers are far cheaper.
Web 2.0 is software as a service, done piece by piece. Software isn't going away. The Internet isn't going away. So the platform may change, but software as a service delivered over the net isn't going anywhere.
If policeware gets a free pass to do things that, done by other parties, would be considered "malicious", then other malware will quickly begin to disguise itself as policeware to avoid detection.
AT&T is like the RIAA of telecommunications: always behind the times, never wanting to change their business model, always trying to monopolize something.
AT&T also said an open-access network would deprive AT&T of billions of dollars, and encourage the growth of wireless broadband in the country
AT&T: fyp
Your world, delivered... to the NSA
As nasty as avsforum is, it's actually hugely informative and packed with people who love nothing more than to play with high-end AV stuff. I found it totally invaluable looking into projectors, audio systems, and HTPC solutions for my basement theater.
You're not a lawyer, but you play one on Slashdot?
Give me a break.
Napster facilitated infringement, because it built lists of files people had available for transfer and facilitated connections between users, and made them searchable. Napster HAD a substantial noninfringing use, and that's where intent came in; courts believed that Napster was intended to facilitate infringement.
This file stripping does not facilitate file trading. You can already trade the file just as easily without stripping atoms which would identify you. The fact that stripping atoms anonymizes files, making it harder to hold someone accountable for placing the files on a P2P network is incredibly peripheral compared to Napster, which was a tool specifically built to enable people to index and copy files efficiently.
It's also fairly irrelevent whether these files find their way onto P2P networks; they're almost certainly all there. As long as CDs are sold, their contents will be on P2P networks.
... depending on what you try to output it to.
Forcing my own hardware to restrict what I do? check.
Burning huge amounts of cpu and ram to restrict what I do? check.
Not getting adopted, ever? check.
Fearghus is a good person to be talking about this, since his Obsidian Studios is the developer of NWN2 and its upcoming expansion.
NWN and NWN2 are games designed with multiplayer in mind. The original spawned hundreds, if not thousands, of "persistent worlds", which were mini-MMOs. Some linked servers ended up supporting hundreds of simultaneous players, and individual popular servers handled 50-95 simultaneous users, often stopping only at the limit of the hardware and the engine (as an NWN PW developer, and experienced sysadmin, it seemed very much to me that the engine had some sort of O(n squared) cost associated with users; going from 1 to 35 would barely dent a server, but going 35 to 55 could bring the same server practically to its knees).
Imagine if WoW supported user mods. There could be an "official server" and any number of player servers. The people setting up a player server could allow a player joining there to import their character in from the official server (not the other way around, of course). The people on the player servers would start with a base world, but have tools to add, remove, and modify the content. Add in a scripting language and a way to distribute customized art assets (models, animations, etc), and you have something like Quake 3 w/autodownload, but applied to an RPG instead of an FPS.
Bioware began to hook into another possibility when they started offering their "digital distribution" modules for NWN. For some small amount ($4-$12 depending on the module), you got an add-on game experience for NWN; a sort of new official campaign to play through. Imagine if a game like NWN or NWN2 had an "NWN live" service you could subscribe to. You pay $8 a month or something, and it gives you access to some cooler online features, as well as content updates. New models, new portraits, new adventures, etc. Bioware seemed to indicate they were pleasantly surprised with the reception of DD modules for NWN1.
One of the things about NWN and its expansions was that each expansion featured a bunch of new things (new classes, support for prestige classes, new models, new spells, new voices, new vfx and sfx). These were featured in a new official campaign adventure - one you could play through - but they were also remixable into a lot of new user adventures, and also could be combined with custom content for more possibilities. And a nice toolset to tie it all together.
A game that was gorgeous and easy to use and fun like City of Heroes could have reached its true potential with a scripting language and a toolset and a way to use that end-user content, because hobby content creators would have come up with enough refreshing content to avoid the "gets dull" label CoH earned for its repetitive missions.
It really depends. This is true in a lot of cases and it has nothing to do with lawsuits when it is the PWG (proverbial white guy) -- it's because some companies will actually challenge unemployment claims. In some states, at least - in Texas, for example - your unemployment "insurance" rate is based on how much is paid out to former employees who file. So if you let someone go without cause and they file for unemployment, you end up paying for it. If they file and you have a paper trail, you can challenge it. (In TX, the state may still pay the benefits, but they won't be counted against you; or they may reject the claim, and even demand the former employee pay back money if they already received benefits).
Corporate HR where they enforce the policy, naturally the policy will include a PIP; you can't go and set up a policy that says, "If the party is a member of a protected class, then..." But I have been at places where an ad hoc firing can and will be approved by HR, but only if the person is not in a protected class.
As a rule, companies refer all questions about former employees to HR. HR, as a rule, will only confirm stated dates of employment, title, maybe salary. Why? Anything bad they say can be construed as slander, and since your new job is on the line, the damages could be significant if slander proves to have cost you a job. They've cut their ties to you, so there's no point to them saying anything bad; it doesn't benefit them.
:p
Some companies wlil say glowing things about someone they really liked who left by choice, and then say nothing about the others. The one negative catch phrase that has seemed to propagate is, "[Person X] is not eligible for employment" or "not eligible for re-hiring" or such, which translates into, "We wouldn't want them back", but is apparently "safe".
Also, again, firing black people isn't that easy. Anyone who's been a manager knows it can be a real bitch to get rid of an employee in any protected class - race, gender, or (in some states) sexual orientation. Firing a straight white guy is a piece of cake; any reason will do, because at-will employment means you can fire them for NO REASON. If you go to HR and tell them you want to fire the gay black woman in your group because she's been snorting coke at her desk, coming in all of 3 hours a week, and took a bat to your car when you asked her about her project, they'd probably ask you to put her on a Performance Improvement Plan for 6 weeks and issue warnings for every infraction before they'd even consider firing her.
That's a bit of an exaggeration, but it isn't a BIG exaggeration.
Hopefully, Bioware will put the RPG back in MMORPG.