Microsoft's EULA could state that by opening the wrapper I agree to eat the contents. If I don't agree to that, I don't buy the product.
Those EULA's are pretty much like that. You can think of them as those goofy toys from a Cracker Jack box. You don't know what it is till you get the box home and open it. But once it's open, if you don't like the toy, you can't take it back. So you are stuck eating the crappy product anyway. And, while it's sugary sweet on the outside, you know there are peanuts in there. But you eat them anyway hoping no one will find out. But then, a few hours later you can feel it churning inside you. You run to purge your system and remove that inferior product and replace it with the more substantial Pringles and Dew. No cool toys but definitely a better product!
Re:You guys still use HTTP to get this? P2P!
on
Red Hat 8.0 Released
·
· Score: 1
Actually, it would be kinda cool if RH would run Gnutella/Kazaa/OpenNap/... clients on their servers too. With their fat/phat:-) pipe downloads wouldn't be too bad and once many others have the iso's and are sharing them download speeds would only improve... in theory.:-)
Arcade games also have the problem that their goal tends to be to get the player to drop in as much cash as possible in the shortest time possible.
Sorta true. Arcade games are designed to provide about 2 minutes average of game play per credit. That's pretty much the sweet spot to maximize profit. That's why they are in this business. You can't make much money if some dude is tying up a machine for half hour or more on one quarter. Long lines drive away customers. They can't make the game too short though. It wouldn't be much fun losing another quarter every 15 seconds. Who'd come back? Two minutes is enough time to keep a novice interested in getting better while an expert is rewarded with extended game play.
Many argue that the reason software costs are the way they are is to make up for the revinue lost do to Software Piracy.
I was really about to post a comment about piracy not hurting companies as much as they'd like you to believe then this story comes out.:-) Pretty much says what I was thinking - that Micro$oft seems to be doing rather well despite all the bootleg software out there.
Tough actions may be a contributing factor but more than likely it's the guarantee of good quality at a reasonable price. You know... what we've been asking for all along!
Paying a reasonable fee for good quality music is a lot more attractive to me than hunting for mp3s on Kazaa that are poor quality, incomplete crap. You need to download a few different versions of the same song to find the best one because someone out there doesn't know how to use MusicMatch very well.
The true pirates aren't going to pay anyway but they are a minority. The majority of us who could give a crap either way are just looking for the best bang for our buck. $20 for a CD with one or two good songs on it is an incentive for us to use Kazaa. A decent price and a guarantee of good quality music we want... of course we'll switch!
... the more they attack xenu.net, the more we all know about it, "we all" being those who could care less about scientology one way or the other. and therefore, we now all know about scientology's seedy underside. and therefore, us neutrals now DO care about scientology...
But we need to care. It's when we stop paying attention to what's going on around us that religious fanatics become powerful enough to fly planes into the buildings of infidels.
...while DNS is decidedly vulernable, the internet somehow manages to have worked well for a while now.
One problem with that comparison. First, "the internet" isn't susceptible to identity theft. Second, because of DNS (and possibly the faulty management of...), domains can be hijacked (website identity theft). Remember sex.com?
Why would this be any different than any other "single point" solution.
I highly doubt any kiddie pr0n vendors have contacted them...
The previous paragraph to what I quoted was talking about them fighting kiddie pr0n. There was nothing in the article that said their "algorithms" weren't used for that purpose as well. (it of course didn't specifically say they actually were used for that purpose either, I guess that wass something we are left to infer for ourselves.)
More interesting though, who appointed them kiddie pr0n police? What makes it ok for them to download a file to see if it is kiddie pr0n? Can we all now download kiddie pr0n as long as we claim we are self appointed kiddie pr0n police?
"Our algorithms are adaptive," claims Ishikawa. "You can cut a picture in half and we'll still find it, matching the cut-down version against a database of originals, effectively matching the electronic DNA of the target."
Shouldn't they be getting in trouble themselves for either 1, downloading kiddie pr0n, or 2, compairing the images to a database collection of kiddie pr0n the've collected over the years?
I know, they are doing it for the greater good and are not redistributing kiddie pr0n but it still sounds funny...
I was an advocate of Hungarian notation but have since changed my mind. I know all the arguments for and against it and, if anyone decides to research it, you will find more arguments against. But I'm not going into that debate, I just feel like sharing my thoughts.:-)
In my experience, using it to indicate type really is unnecessary for most primitive types. If the application is designed well enough, you should never need it. The identifier names themselves should indicate something about how they are used which should infer their type (i.e. latitude - would most likely be a double). However, I still use it when there could possibly be confusion (i.e. strLatitude for a temporary string variable before I do a conversion). Also, I still use it do denote scope which I couldn't live without (i.e. m_member, g_global). Sometimes p for pointer but that's usually my limit.
True that it may help reading someone else's code but then, isn't that why we all document so well!;-)
Being a company or private person, we all have a legal right to reverse engineer anything we want to learn how it works. I can take apart my radio controled car to see what makes it tick if I want. I have that right. A company has that right.
The reverse engineering clause (for software or anything else) is designed to prevent someone from stealing their technology and using it in their own products. There is nothing (asside from patents) that says you can't take someone's technology, learn from it and improve on it. But then, even patents allow for that, so long as the improvements are unique and non obvious from the original.
It's when it is direct theft if IP that is the problem. But then, in the case cited in the article, is it patented (infringement)? is it a cut and paste of binaries (copyright)? What was the actual IP stolen? Does this mean GM can no longer make cars with stearing wheels because Ford did it first?
It wasn't much of a problem before. Most pirates wouldn't have paid the money for it anyway. But now they've drug the rest of us into it and now we are all criminals!
I've gotten so fed up with this crap. I really quit buying CDs now. I download the songs I wanna hear. Not because I want to steal them but because I don't want to give the RIAA any more money they can use to get me, or the rest of us, up our respective a$$es. I support my favorite artists by going to concerts (yeah I know the RIAA gets a cut but what can you do?) and buying merchandise like the concert T's. God, I can't wait to see Disturbed and Korn next month!:-)
Really, this wouldn't be such an issue if they were not a$$ raping us $20 for a CD. We all know now, how much it really cost to burn one!:-) and it sure isn't $20!
If they'd charge a reasonable price and quit a$$ raping their customers and a$$ raping the bands they are pretending to protect (what is it, most bands get $.50 - $1 per CD sold? more? less?), they wouldn't have this problem in the first place!
Google maintains a log of all you've ever searched for associated with a long-term cookie.
Google has not kept this secret. And personally, I think it's a good idea. Rather that sort search results by relevance to the keywords queried, they can use this information to sort the results by relevance to the types of sites I clicked through on previous searches. For an example, say I searched for "cookies", they would rate web development sites higher for me and baking sites higher for someone who frequents recipe sites.
I don't know if that's really what they do with the info but I think it would be a good idea. (how about we leave the personal privacy debate for another thread though...)
What you're doing is protesting the DMCA by sendind an anonymous letter to congress.
The difference is, if the moderators don't agree with you here, your wonderful Karma falls and essentially places duct tape over your mouth so it is less likely you would be heard in the future. I don't think congress determines your letter's worth based on your Karma. Here it is different.
I don't care how good you think you are, it cost money to create quality. I highly doubt anyone could create a quality bug-free product like you are describing in less than a month and be fully implemented, FULLY TESTED (everyone forgets about test!) and determined ~bug free and ready for release to consumer(s).
The amount of time spent on testing should be at least as much as the time spent on design and implementation if not more!
If you want to release a product that is ready for consumer consumption you cant just slap some code together and expect a Microsoft quality (subjective) product.
Database design (even simple) and web development (at least what you are describing) should take no less than a month for design work (a week for layout and design/prototyping), implementation (1 week to implement final design), and test (2 weeks... including different environments, browsers,... let alone just for functionallity). Right there you are in for about $4000.00 in just labor for one person.
And we haven't said anything about the document management piece. Are we talking just file storage? version control? access control?
I would say $15000 is closer to the mark depending on the complexity but in my opinion that's even a little low.
What? Like an Open Sourced System! With hundreds of like minded people with a similar interest in the topic getting their hands in the mix? Presenting their own ideas and information to the whole? Covering all bases in a relatively short amount of time?
Stopping spam is simply a matter of economics. When its uneconomical to send spam, people will stop sending it.
Unfortunately, it still costs next to nothing compared to the cost of postage and production of bulk snail mail yet there seems to be no end in sight for that any time soon. I'm afraid SPAM is here to stay.:-(
Our only hope would be legislation but I am not nieve enough to think that even that will stop my inbox from filling up. Maybe I can sue and make a few bucks from it though.:-) Oh the irony!
Is it just me or does it look as if some of the complaints were posted by someone w/ a grudge? (not that I support ripping people off or anything... that just sucks!)
They changed some string (i.e. replace CDex with NeoAudio), changed the logo and added some nice SpyWare and Adware.... Please do not download and install NeoAudio (they probably make quite a few dollars by shipping the adware) and also advice other people NOT to download NeoAudio either, and warn innocent users at download.com not to download this application but download CDex instead.
Saw these in a few of the posts. Word for word.
Is this someone with a grudge? cut-and-paste plagarism? FUD bots?
Actually, the world you describe is 3 dimensional, the third being time. A 2 dimensional being would not be able to see the point morph into a circle and back to a point. Nor would the 2D being see a point morph to a line and back. To see anything would require a 3rd physical dimension since the 2D plane is infinitely thin. Possibly the 2D being may be able to detect a disturbance but that would be about it.
We as 3D (physical - 4th dimension temporal) beings can observe this phenomenon on a 2D (physical - 3rd temporal) universe because we are outside that universe. Likewise in order for us to view a similar phenomenon on our own 4D universe, we must step outside our universe into a 5D universe. We may be able to detect a disturbance but we could never physically observe the phenomenon. Not even with a cute java applet.
True, (more) might not have been the most intuitive. Maybe it should have been (top) or (up). Either way, the point was the fact that it was there in the first place when most often it is not.
Notice the "more" link...
on
GUIs for Everyone
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· Score: 2, Interesting
Here I am reading the article scrolling with my mouse wheel. I get to the bottom of the first column, instead of being required to move the mouse, grab and drag the scroll bar, or repeatedly scroll the wheel back up, he provides a quick link to jump to the top.
Very simple, yet elegant. You don't see things like that often. Small little things like that can greatly improve the end user experience.
Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft's EULA could state that by opening the wrapper I agree to eat the contents. If I don't agree to that, I don't buy the product.
Those EULA's are pretty much like that. You can think of them as those goofy toys from a Cracker Jack box. You don't know what it is till you get the box home and open it. But once it's open, if you don't like the toy, you can't take it back. So you are stuck eating the crappy product anyway. And, while it's sugary sweet on the outside, you know there are peanuts in there. But you eat them anyway hoping no one will find out. But then, a few hours later you can feel it churning inside you. You run to purge your system and remove that inferior product and replace it with the more substantial Pringles and Dew. No cool toys but definitely a better product!
Actually, it would be kinda cool if RH would run Gnutella/Kazaa/OpenNap/... clients on their servers too. With their fat/phat :-) pipe downloads wouldn't be too bad and once many others have the iso's and are sharing them download speeds would only improve... in theory. :-)
Arcade games also have the problem that their goal tends to be to get the player to drop in as much cash as possible in the shortest time possible.
Sorta true. Arcade games are designed to provide about 2 minutes average of game play per credit. That's pretty much the sweet spot to maximize profit. That's why they are in this business. You can't make much money if some dude is tying up a machine for half hour or more on one quarter. Long lines drive away customers. They can't make the game too short though. It wouldn't be much fun losing another quarter every 15 seconds. Who'd come back? Two minutes is enough time to keep a novice interested in getting better while an expert is rewarded with extended game play.
Many argue that the reason software costs are the way they are is to make up for the revinue lost do to Software Piracy.
:-) Pretty much says what I was thinking - that Micro$oft seems to be doing rather well despite all the bootleg software out there.
I was really about to post a comment about piracy not hurting companies as much as they'd like you to believe then this story comes out.
Tough actions may be a contributing factor but more than likely it's the guarantee of good quality at a reasonable price. You know... what we've been asking for all along!
Paying a reasonable fee for good quality music is a lot more attractive to me than hunting for mp3s on Kazaa that are poor quality, incomplete crap. You need to download a few different versions of the same song to find the best one because someone out there doesn't know how to use MusicMatch very well.
The true pirates aren't going to pay anyway but they are a minority. The majority of us who could give a crap either way are just looking for the best bang for our buck. $20 for a CD with one or two good songs on it is an incentive for us to use Kazaa. A decent price and a guarantee of good quality music we want... of course we'll switch!
Duh.
... the more they attack xenu.net, the more we all know about it, "we all" being those who could care less about scientology one way or the other. and therefore, we now all know about scientology's seedy underside. and therefore, us neutrals now DO care about scientology...
But we need to care. It's when we stop paying attention to what's going on around us that religious fanatics become powerful enough to fly planes into the buildings of infidels.
From a +3 comment this morning to the front page! Nice! :-)
"Arrr, me harties! This be giving us legitimacy! We sail for New Orleans, with our bounty of broadband gold and pirrrrated MP3s!"
:-)
This reminds me of the Video Pirates sketch from Amazon Women on the Moon. The pirates capture a ship with a treasure chest full of VHS videos.
...while DNS is decidedly vulernable, the internet somehow manages to have worked well for a while now.
One problem with that comparison. First, "the internet" isn't susceptible to identity theft. Second, because of DNS (and possibly the faulty management of...), domains can be hijacked (website identity theft). Remember sex.com?
Why would this be any different than any other "single point" solution.
I highly doubt any kiddie pr0n vendors have contacted them...
:-)
The previous paragraph to what I quoted was talking about them fighting kiddie pr0n. There was nothing in the article that said their "algorithms" weren't used for that purpose as well. (it of course didn't specifically say they actually were used for that purpose either, I guess that wass something we are left to infer for ourselves.)
More interesting though, who appointed them kiddie pr0n police? What makes it ok for them to download a file to see if it is kiddie pr0n? Can we all now download kiddie pr0n as long as we claim we are self appointed kiddie pr0n police?
I guess this comment could fit either topic.
"Our algorithms are adaptive," claims Ishikawa. "You can cut a picture in half and we'll still find it, matching the cut-down version against a database of originals, effectively matching the electronic DNA of the target."
Shouldn't they be getting in trouble themselves for either 1, downloading kiddie pr0n, or 2, compairing the images to a database collection of kiddie pr0n the've collected over the years?
I know, they are doing it for the greater good and are not redistributing kiddie pr0n but it still sounds funny...
I was an advocate of Hungarian notation but have since changed my mind. I know all the arguments for and against it and, if anyone decides to research it, you will find more arguments against. But I'm not going into that debate, I just feel like sharing my thoughts. :-)
;-)
In my experience, using it to indicate type really is unnecessary for most primitive types. If the application is designed well enough, you should never need it. The identifier names themselves should indicate something about how they are used which should infer their type (i.e. latitude - would most likely be a double). However, I still use it when there could possibly be confusion (i.e. strLatitude for a temporary string variable before I do a conversion). Also, I still use it do denote scope which I couldn't live without (i.e. m_member, g_global). Sometimes p for pointer but that's usually my limit.
True that it may help reading someone else's code but then, isn't that why we all document so well!
Being a company or private person, we all have a legal right to reverse engineer anything we want to learn how it works. I can take apart my radio controled car to see what makes it tick if I want. I have that right. A company has that right.
The reverse engineering clause (for software or anything else) is designed to prevent someone from stealing their technology and using it in their own products. There is nothing (asside from patents) that says you can't take someone's technology, learn from it and improve on it. But then, even patents allow for that, so long as the improvements are unique and non obvious from the original.
It's when it is direct theft if IP that is the problem. But then, in the case cited in the article, is it patented (infringement)? is it a cut and paste of binaries (copyright)? What was the actual IP stolen? Does this mean GM can no longer make cars with stearing wheels because Ford did it first?
It wasn't much of a problem before. Most pirates wouldn't have paid the money for it anyway. But now they've drug the rest of us into it and now we are all criminals!
:-)
:-) and it sure isn't $20!
I've gotten so fed up with this crap. I really quit buying CDs now. I download the songs I wanna hear. Not because I want to steal them but because I don't want to give the RIAA any more money they can use to get me, or the rest of us, up our respective a$$es. I support my favorite artists by going to concerts (yeah I know the RIAA gets a cut but what can you do?) and buying merchandise like the concert T's. God, I can't wait to see Disturbed and Korn next month!
Really, this wouldn't be such an issue if they were not a$$ raping us $20 for a CD. We all know now, how much it really cost to burn one!
If they'd charge a reasonable price and quit a$$ raping their customers and a$$ raping the bands they are pretending to protect (what is it, most bands get $.50 - $1 per CD sold? more? less?), they wouldn't have this problem in the first place!
Some sites report that more than half or 75 percent of their referrals come from Google -- those are scary numbers.
Yeah that is scary! We have an effective search engine at our disposal! Who'd have thunk?
Google maintains a log of all you've ever searched for associated with a long-term cookie.
Google has not kept this secret. And personally, I think it's a good idea. Rather that sort search results by relevance to the keywords queried, they can use this information to sort the results by relevance to the types of sites I clicked through on previous searches. For an example, say I searched for "cookies", they would rate web development sites higher for me and baking sites higher for someone who frequents recipe sites.
I don't know if that's really what they do with the info but I think it would be a good idea. (how about we leave the personal privacy debate for another thread though...)
What you're doing is protesting the DMCA by sendind an anonymous letter to congress.
The difference is, if the moderators don't agree with you here, your wonderful Karma falls and essentially places duct tape over your mouth so it is less likely you would be heard in the future. I don't think congress determines your letter's worth based on your Karma. Here it is different.
Now what do I do about all this smoke?
I don't care how good you think you are, it cost money to create quality. I highly doubt anyone could create a quality bug-free product like you are describing in less than a month and be fully implemented, FULLY TESTED (everyone forgets about test!) and determined ~bug free and ready for release to consumer(s).
... let alone just for functionallity). Right there you are in for about $4000.00 in just labor for one person.
The amount of time spent on testing should be at least as much as the time spent on design and implementation if not more!
If you want to release a product that is ready for consumer consumption you cant just slap some code together and expect a Microsoft quality (subjective) product.
Database design (even simple) and web development (at least what you are describing) should take no less than a month for design work (a week for layout and design/prototyping), implementation (1 week to implement final design), and test (2 weeks... including different environments, browsers,
And we haven't said anything about the document management piece. Are we talking just file storage? version control? access control?
I would say $15000 is closer to the mark depending on the complexity but in my opinion that's even a little low.
What? Like an Open Sourced System! With hundreds of like minded people with a similar interest in the topic getting their hands in the mix? Presenting their own ideas and information to the whole? Covering all bases in a relatively short amount of time?
:-)
That surely would never fly!
Stopping spam is simply a matter of economics. When its uneconomical to send spam, people will stop sending it.
:-(
:-) Oh the irony!
Unfortunately, it still costs next to nothing compared to the cost of postage and production of bulk snail mail yet there seems to be no end in sight for that any time soon. I'm afraid SPAM is here to stay.
Our only hope would be legislation but I am not nieve enough to think that even that will stop my inbox from filling up. Maybe I can sue and make a few bucks from it though.
Is it just me or does it look as if some of the complaints were posted by someone w/ a grudge? (not that I support ripping people off or anything ... that just sucks!)
... Please do not download and install NeoAudio (they probably make quite a few dollars by shipping the adware) and also advice other people NOT to download NeoAudio either, and warn innocent users at download.com not to download this application but download CDex instead.
They changed some string (i.e. replace CDex with NeoAudio), changed the logo and added some nice SpyWare and Adware.
Saw these in a few of the posts. Word for word.
Is this someone with a grudge? cut-and-paste plagarism? FUD bots?
Just curious!
Actually, the world you describe is 3 dimensional, the third being time. A 2 dimensional being would not be able to see the point morph into a circle and back to a point. Nor would the 2D being see a point morph to a line and back. To see anything would require a 3rd physical dimension since the 2D plane is infinitely thin. Possibly the 2D being may be able to detect a disturbance but that would be about it.
We as 3D (physical - 4th dimension temporal) beings can observe this phenomenon on a 2D (physical - 3rd temporal) universe because we are outside that universe. Likewise in order for us to view a similar phenomenon on our own 4D universe, we must step outside our universe into a 5D universe. We may be able to detect a disturbance but we could never physically observe the phenomenon. Not even with a cute java applet.
True, (more) might not have been the most intuitive. Maybe it should have been (top) or (up). Either way, the point was the fact that it was there in the first place when most often it is not.
Here I am reading the article scrolling with my mouse wheel. I get to the bottom of the first column, instead of being required to move the mouse, grab and drag the scroll bar, or repeatedly scroll the wheel back up, he provides a quick link to jump to the top.
Very simple, yet elegant. You don't see things like that often. Small little things like that can greatly improve the end user experience.