When I was at school there was no need to get on any network. In fact, only two rooms in the entire school had a connection to the network. The teachers had a printed sheet of what we used to call "paper", and they'd use an archaic device called a pen to tick off students in attendance. Of course, back then they also actually knew the students, which was a big help (after a couple of classes they could put names to faces and check off the register in silence while the students got on with some work). It seems schools are falling over themselves to find technical solutions to something that's been trivial to manage for years, I don't see the agenda, are schools subsidised by the companies who provide the technology and welcome real world trials or is it something else?
The irony is that CNN can't see that this kind of trolling is what's killing the news media. If I want made up opinion with little basis in reality, that's practically the blogosphere's raison d'être. If I go to a "respectable" news source, I actually want facts. These stories might help generate some eyeballs short term, but long term it reduces their credibility to that of the average Youtube commenter - way to throw away your one unique selling point for some temporay short term gain.
Or, hopefully, it might start trying to compete on quality and innovation instead of throwing around it's weight. It's not really in our interests for MS to go away - they'll just be replaced by someone else - but a fiercely competitive market place is something that could actually benefit consumers for once.
But that's all commercial, and we're specifically talking consumer. You might not get fired for shopping around for a new back-end infrastructure (although I've worked at places where it'd certainly mean you weren't in danger of any immediate promotion/raise), but take away management's Windows/Office/Powerpoint and see how long you stay in a job. I think we're stuck with Windows on the desktop for a while yet, although if we could just see the end of the dominance of IE it'd be a start.
And even then, they can be offered tasty incentives for when they leave public life, so you'd need restrictions on that, too. Then the argument would be that nobody would ever enter public life if it meant they were severely limiting their options in the commercial sector later. I sometimes wonder if it really wouldn't be better to just elect politicians at random, by lottery.
Not to mention one of the devices might be provided by the school and be pretty locked down in what it can do, the other might then be a personal device that the student carries because they have more freedom (to install their own apps, etc - I've experienced this in the commercial world before, having a work-approved laptop that I had to use to access internal systems but which wouldn't allow me to install any of the development tools I need to do my job, therefore having to also carry my own personal laptop with me in order to be productive). Alternatively, the laptops might be tied to particular classrooms (we probably shouldn't assume just because they're laptops that the kids are allowed to take them away, they might just be laptops because it's far easier to manage when you need to clear the classroom for some other activity) rather than carried around by students meaning the students need another device if they want to access anything when they're not in class. There are all kinds of reasons why it's not unreasonable to assume more than one device per child.
Who is to say it wouldn't run Windows apps - what's wrong with including some kind of virtual machine running a previous version for backwards compatability? I can already run Windows apps on Mac/Linux using this method, I'm sure MS could include a free license. They could even make it a business opportunity if they made it a limited time functionality to ease the transition (i.e. we'll support this for X years, then you have to buy new apps or your own old Windows license).
A patent doesn't prevent people at home using their own remedies, it only prevents a company from profiting by selling a patented product. If you had the skills and ability to tool an exact replica of an iPhone in your own home, the company couldn't sue you for breach of their intellectual property.
The crazy thing is, if MS had officially supported installing apps like XBMC, they would now own the living room. It was such a great app and so ahead of anything else at the time, hell, it might even have saved HD-DVD if it was all seen as part of the XBOX family of functionality. Instead they locked everything down to go chase the shadows of pirates, I wonder how much that will end up costing them when the final tally is made.
And as mobile and console gaming converge, I wonder how they will continue to justify a distinction that essentially gives one company a competitive advantage over another.
If you wanted to prevent me modifying the console, don't sell it to me, instead make it clear at the point of sale that I'm actually only renting it so I am free to go actually buy a console from someone else. This is a fun game, isn't it?
This is not about a company refusing to honour a warranty where the hardware is modified. This is about someone losing their liberty. I think it's more than fair that a company says "we support only this product in this particular state of being, if you modify it beyond that you're on your own", but jail time for a modification to a piece of private property that hurts nobody, seriously?
And in that way it's entirely the same as jailbreaking your iPhone. Circumventing copy protection doesn't automatically mean you're doing so to breech copyright - sometimes it's a necessary measure to let you use the device you own to its full potential. The courts have already ruled this is acceptable behaviour.
The problem is a little bit chicken and egg. Until the crack is available, people are unlikely to be able to develop specific uses for the crack (indeed, to do so they'd either have to have full developer licenses, which instantly bars a big section of society, or they'd have to break the law by cracking the console anyway). Sure, the first use is always to play "backups", mainly because that's the simplest use, but anyone involved in the scene around the original XBOX will know that eventually all kinds of amazing tools and apps were developed to take advantage of the crack. The most significant of these being XBMC, which has outlived the console itself and even back then was years ahead of many of today's commercial media centre offerings. That's why it's particularly significant that they're trying to prevent testimony from someone involved in that scene, it's like they're closing down that avenue of defence specifically so they can play the "this will only be used for piracy" card.
Besides, the exception was granted specifically to enable certain uses with the person's device. Even though it specifically mentioned the iPhone, and even though that doesn't mean it creates a blanket rule for all other devices, courts will generally follow the precedent set down by previous courts. If the precedent is that a person is allowed to modify their device for their own use so long as the commercial aspect is not present, the courts should apply that to any device in the future (the principle being the use, not the device). The thing that might trip this guy up is the commercial asepct, if he was selling the modification it might run afoul on those grounds.
I wish MS would give us a legitimate way to install games to the HDD and not need the disk present to play. Even if it was something like a one-time-use code that ties the game to your gamertag, still no good for used games but it would work with new games and prevent me having to switch disks when I change consoles or go visit friends/relatives with consoles. If they don't, people like this come up with non-legitimate ways to do it so they're only hurting their paying customers by not offering this (at the very least if MS offered a way to do this legitimately they could argue against the stock "it's only for backups" excuse).
You can already download games from the Live service and play them from the hard drive (if you don't mind paying MS's extortionate prices). You can also install any game from a disk to the hard drive, although you still need to insert the disk to play the game - I assume it does some check to ensure the disk is present before streaming the actual data from the HDD. You've been able to do both of these things on the 360 for a while. What would be really nice is the ability to install the game to the hard drive from a disk but not have the disk present, meaning I can enjoy the benefits of finding the cheapest copy of the game AND playing without needing the disk on both the 360s I have at home (carrying the disk between them is a completely unecessary chore put in place purely to prevent piracy, yet another way in which legitimate customers are disadvantaged in order to try and crack down on pirates, meanwhile pirates easily avoid the measures and get all the benefit).
We also know from the movies that the timeline can and does rewrite itself - so this reconciles even if something was to happen to them in the future to prevent them going back to 1985, at the point that [whatever] happened, their future selves would disappear, but assuming nothing prevents their return the timeline would continue as normal.
I think it's 30 years, but that just re-inforces the point - I barely recognise myself as a teenager from photos 20 years ago, and that's sitting down looking at a photo knowing it's me in advance.
Besides, steam engines were around and the idea of using them to propel vehicles was gaining traction. We know for a fact that the early pioneers of motor cars and trains and tanks weren't burned at the stake as evil spirits, so we can assume that, while people might have found the concept unusual or surprising, they were certainly accepting enough that you could haul around a DeLorean and it wouldn't do more than raise a few eyebrows.
A few people in the comments mention the travelling in time and space issue - I guess it's possible the Delorian has some control built in to move it through space as well as time (well, other than the basic forward and reverse speeds!) but this is certainly never mentioned - and let's face it, a device that lets you travel to any point in space instantly is probably an even bigger development than a time machine - and it means it would have to be really bloody precise to land the train exactly on the rails when they return to the future.
That's easily solved - have a human typist type up the responses, correcting for spelling and grammar, from both parties to eliminate the difference, and set a timer on every response (i.e. all responses are received exactly two minutes after the previous message). Those elements should not be part of any realistic test.
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When I was at school there was no need to get on any network. In fact, only two rooms in the entire school had a connection to the network. The teachers had a printed sheet of what we used to call "paper", and they'd use an archaic device called a pen to tick off students in attendance. Of course, back then they also actually knew the students, which was a big help (after a couple of classes they could put names to faces and check off the register in silence while the students got on with some work). It seems schools are falling over themselves to find technical solutions to something that's been trivial to manage for years, I don't see the agenda, are schools subsidised by the companies who provide the technology and welcome real world trials or is it something else?
The irony is that CNN can't see that this kind of trolling is what's killing the news media. If I want made up opinion with little basis in reality, that's practically the blogosphere's raison d'être. If I go to a "respectable" news source, I actually want facts. These stories might help generate some eyeballs short term, but long term it reduces their credibility to that of the average Youtube commenter - way to throw away your one unique selling point for some temporay short term gain.
Or, hopefully, it might start trying to compete on quality and innovation instead of throwing around it's weight. It's not really in our interests for MS to go away - they'll just be replaced by someone else - but a fiercely competitive market place is something that could actually benefit consumers for once.
But that's all commercial, and we're specifically talking consumer. You might not get fired for shopping around for a new back-end infrastructure (although I've worked at places where it'd certainly mean you weren't in danger of any immediate promotion/raise), but take away management's Windows/Office/Powerpoint and see how long you stay in a job. I think we're stuck with Windows on the desktop for a while yet, although if we could just see the end of the dominance of IE it'd be a start.
And even then, they can be offered tasty incentives for when they leave public life, so you'd need restrictions on that, too. Then the argument would be that nobody would ever enter public life if it meant they were severely limiting their options in the commercial sector later. I sometimes wonder if it really wouldn't be better to just elect politicians at random, by lottery.
Looks kind of like the Scream mask face. Maybe this whole crater thing is just going to turn out to be a promo stunt for the new movie.
Not to mention one of the devices might be provided by the school and be pretty locked down in what it can do, the other might then be a personal device that the student carries because they have more freedom (to install their own apps, etc - I've experienced this in the commercial world before, having a work-approved laptop that I had to use to access internal systems but which wouldn't allow me to install any of the development tools I need to do my job, therefore having to also carry my own personal laptop with me in order to be productive). Alternatively, the laptops might be tied to particular classrooms (we probably shouldn't assume just because they're laptops that the kids are allowed to take them away, they might just be laptops because it's far easier to manage when you need to clear the classroom for some other activity) rather than carried around by students meaning the students need another device if they want to access anything when they're not in class. There are all kinds of reasons why it's not unreasonable to assume more than one device per child.
Who is to say it wouldn't run Windows apps - what's wrong with including some kind of virtual machine running a previous version for backwards compatability? I can already run Windows apps on Mac/Linux using this method, I'm sure MS could include a free license. They could even make it a business opportunity if they made it a limited time functionality to ease the transition (i.e. we'll support this for X years, then you have to buy new apps or your own old Windows license).
Good luck taking away people's coffee or cocoa beans.
A patent doesn't prevent people at home using their own remedies, it only prevents a company from profiting by selling a patented product. If you had the skills and ability to tool an exact replica of an iPhone in your own home, the company couldn't sue you for breach of their intellectual property.
The crazy thing is, if MS had officially supported installing apps like XBMC, they would now own the living room. It was such a great app and so ahead of anything else at the time, hell, it might even have saved HD-DVD if it was all seen as part of the XBOX family of functionality. Instead they locked everything down to go chase the shadows of pirates, I wonder how much that will end up costing them when the final tally is made.
And as mobile and console gaming converge, I wonder how they will continue to justify a distinction that essentially gives one company a competitive advantage over another.
If you wanted to prevent me modifying the console, don't sell it to me, instead make it clear at the point of sale that I'm actually only renting it so I am free to go actually buy a console from someone else. This is a fun game, isn't it?
This is not about a company refusing to honour a warranty where the hardware is modified. This is about someone losing their liberty. I think it's more than fair that a company says "we support only this product in this particular state of being, if you modify it beyond that you're on your own", but jail time for a modification to a piece of private property that hurts nobody, seriously?
And in that way it's entirely the same as jailbreaking your iPhone. Circumventing copy protection doesn't automatically mean you're doing so to breech copyright - sometimes it's a necessary measure to let you use the device you own to its full potential. The courts have already ruled this is acceptable behaviour.
The problem is a little bit chicken and egg. Until the crack is available, people are unlikely to be able to develop specific uses for the crack (indeed, to do so they'd either have to have full developer licenses, which instantly bars a big section of society, or they'd have to break the law by cracking the console anyway). Sure, the first use is always to play "backups", mainly because that's the simplest use, but anyone involved in the scene around the original XBOX will know that eventually all kinds of amazing tools and apps were developed to take advantage of the crack. The most significant of these being XBMC, which has outlived the console itself and even back then was years ahead of many of today's commercial media centre offerings. That's why it's particularly significant that they're trying to prevent testimony from someone involved in that scene, it's like they're closing down that avenue of defence specifically so they can play the "this will only be used for piracy" card.
Besides, the exception was granted specifically to enable certain uses with the person's device. Even though it specifically mentioned the iPhone, and even though that doesn't mean it creates a blanket rule for all other devices, courts will generally follow the precedent set down by previous courts. If the precedent is that a person is allowed to modify their device for their own use so long as the commercial aspect is not present, the courts should apply that to any device in the future (the principle being the use, not the device). The thing that might trip this guy up is the commercial asepct, if he was selling the modification it might run afoul on those grounds.
I wish MS would give us a legitimate way to install games to the HDD and not need the disk present to play. Even if it was something like a one-time-use code that ties the game to your gamertag, still no good for used games but it would work with new games and prevent me having to switch disks when I change consoles or go visit friends/relatives with consoles. If they don't, people like this come up with non-legitimate ways to do it so they're only hurting their paying customers by not offering this (at the very least if MS offered a way to do this legitimately they could argue against the stock "it's only for backups" excuse).
You can already download games from the Live service and play them from the hard drive (if you don't mind paying MS's extortionate prices). You can also install any game from a disk to the hard drive, although you still need to insert the disk to play the game - I assume it does some check to ensure the disk is present before streaming the actual data from the HDD. You've been able to do both of these things on the 360 for a while. What would be really nice is the ability to install the game to the hard drive from a disk but not have the disk present, meaning I can enjoy the benefits of finding the cheapest copy of the game AND playing without needing the disk on both the 360s I have at home (carrying the disk between them is a completely unecessary chore put in place purely to prevent piracy, yet another way in which legitimate customers are disadvantaged in order to try and crack down on pirates, meanwhile pirates easily avoid the measures and get all the benefit).
We also know from the movies that the timeline can and does rewrite itself - so this reconciles even if something was to happen to them in the future to prevent them going back to 1985, at the point that [whatever] happened, their future selves would disappear, but assuming nothing prevents their return the timeline would continue as normal.
I think it's 30 years, but that just re-inforces the point - I barely recognise myself as a teenager from photos 20 years ago, and that's sitting down looking at a photo knowing it's me in advance.
Besides, steam engines were around and the idea of using them to propel vehicles was gaining traction. We know for a fact that the early pioneers of motor cars and trains and tanks weren't burned at the stake as evil spirits, so we can assume that, while people might have found the concept unusual or surprising, they were certainly accepting enough that you could haul around a DeLorean and it wouldn't do more than raise a few eyebrows.
That's why they named the dog after him, in the hope that the flattery would cause him to forgive their playing dice with the universe.
A few people in the comments mention the travelling in time and space issue - I guess it's possible the Delorian has some control built in to move it through space as well as time (well, other than the basic forward and reverse speeds!) but this is certainly never mentioned - and let's face it, a device that lets you travel to any point in space instantly is probably an even bigger development than a time machine - and it means it would have to be really bloody precise to land the train exactly on the rails when they return to the future.
That's easily solved - have a human typist type up the responses, correcting for spelling and grammar, from both parties to eliminate the difference, and set a timer on every response (i.e. all responses are received exactly two minutes after the previous message). Those elements should not be part of any realistic test.