Did anyone even bother reading the actual article? If nt, the do it now!
A few examples:
On-site store managers would be subject to a fine of $1,000 or 100 hours of community service for the first offense and $5,000 or 500 hours of community service for each subsequent offense.
Sounds perfectly reasonable to me. A store selling 18+ games to twelve-year-olds should be punished.
The bill would also require an annual, independent analysis of game ratings and require the FTC to conduct an investigation to determine whether hidden sexual content like what was in Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas is a pervasive problem and to take appropriate action
Good idea, honestly. Sorry, but I found Hot Coffee pretty stupid.
Finally, the bill would authorize the FTC to conduct an annual, random audit of retailers to monitor enforcement and report the findings to Congress.
Again, I approve of that idea, greatly.
After all, this legislation is going to affect underage people, unlike Jack Thompson's ideas of banning such games for everyone.
That's what I call pretty low standards, then. Judging from the looks of the new Need For Speed: ProStreet they still seem to think that shoving unfinished games down our throats is next-gen, too. Even IGN gave it just a 6.8. Sorry, but EA would be the last publisher on whose opinion I'd give a crap. Period.
Considering the fat that the average pharmaceutical company invests 20% of their earnings into R&D (and mot of them don't even research new things) compared to the 50% that go into advertising campaigns/bribing doctors one should really wonder if there might be some misunderstanding here.
Besides, pharmaceuticals are the biggest patent trolls known to man. Just change two functional groups of an already known (and cheap) drug that already proved to be anti-cancerous and starting to market it as a new cancer drug nets Roche a hundred times more money per pill than the old generic one.
Remember when they bought out Westwood and literally killed off the Command and Conquer and Lands of Lore series?
They're probably thinking along the lines of "If we can't make decent games, no one should."
Considering the time you spend watching non-skippable anti-piracy ads and copyright notices on regular DVDs, two minutes of just a black screen would definitely be my option of choice.
Am aware of those, they are minor issues. I feel they are worthless, but whatever.
These issues are the center almost any criticism of OOXML has been revolving around, yet! You cannot call them "minor issues" at all!
As many people here and on many other sites have already pointed out, these "backwards compatibility" measures are impossible to implement for anyone except MSFT and those who were able to see the actual code under some chain-linked NDA.
Let's say, OOXML gets implemented as a standard and every word-processing application implements it, what keeps MSFT from just applying a little patch to MS Office to make heavy use of these backwards compat tags? Since the majority of users are still using MS Office this would have dramatic consequences for those who don't
If, say, in fifty years Linux has taken over the world, MSFT is in smithereens because someone decided to revise the antitrust case and MS Office is out of use for several years, nobody will be able to read those OOXML documents anymore, unless MSFT releases the complete specifications.
Therefore OOXML shouldn't be accepted as an ISO standard, because it can only be implemented completely by one party. You shouldn't even call it standard, if it can't be ensured that future generations will be able to read those documents without having to find an x86 Windows PC with MS Office installed!
On a side-note: If MSFT had really really been interested in providing backwards compatibility, they would have just written an application/Office plugin that converted old documents into OOXML without having to use some obfuscated tags. Instead they just squeezed these formatting instructions into their new standard to ensure a steady flow of money from people forced to use MS Office in order to view their documents.
American billion, I suppose == Rest-of-the-world-milliard. Anything else would REALLY be mind-numbing. Imagine two hundred Windows installs per earth inhabitant...
Man, but I'd love to have some webs between my fingers! Or a few billions more brain cells... Or a bazillion T-Lymphocytes trying to kill me...
On the other hand, such medication would indeed be great for all those people who were cut off from oxygen for too long and whose myocard cells usually go into apoptosis once they're re-oxygenated.
Most people like their car as a place where they still have some freedom and I don't think any of those people will like the idea of a car telling them how to accelerate and brake. If a hybrid car can save the same amount of fuel and still lets you drive the way YOU want, why even bother with that other option, anyway?
I believe, it only works on CRTs, if you pump up the resolution to the technical maximum. When I tried ClearType on a CRT (in 1024*768) a few years ago, it looked like crap.
The problem isn't sub-pixel rendering in general (if it was, any anti-aliasing feature would be covered by these patents). ClearType is taking avantake of the way of drawing pixels LCDs use (red, green, blue standing next to each other instead of being mixed together) to increase anti-aliasing even further. This technology is LCD-specific and patented by Microsoft.
Slashdot Mirror
A few examples:
Sounds perfectly reasonable to me. A store selling 18+ games to twelve-year-olds should be punished.
Good idea, honestly. Sorry, but I found Hot Coffee pretty stupid.
Again, I approve of that idea, greatly.
After all, this legislation is going to affect underage people, unlike Jack Thompson's ideas of banning such games for everyone.
I wonder how long it takes science to figure out that spending time in the army leads to aggressive behaviour, as well.
That's what I call pretty low standards, then. Judging from the looks of the new Need For Speed: ProStreet they still seem to think that shoving unfinished games down our throats is next-gen, too. Even IGN gave it just a 6.8. Sorry, but EA would be the last publisher on whose opinion I'd give a crap. Period.
I'd like to see someone draw blood through one of those... Should get you the clearest serum ever.
Considering the fat that the average pharmaceutical company invests 20% of their earnings into R&D (and mot of them don't even research new things) compared to the 50% that go into advertising campaigns/bribing doctors one should really wonder if there might be some misunderstanding here.
Besides, pharmaceuticals are the biggest patent trolls known to man. Just change two functional groups of an already known (and cheap) drug that already proved to be anti-cancerous and starting to market it as a new cancer drug nets Roche a hundred times more money per pill than the old generic one.
Remember when they bought out Westwood and literally killed off the Command and Conquer and Lands of Lore series? They're probably thinking along the lines of "If we can't make decent games, no one should."
Got any links to prove that? I mean, this is a pretty insulting statement you made there, actually.
Rest assured, it takes you four mouse-clicks to disable them. Every tried that under Vista?
www.imdb.com is your friend.
Considering the time you spend watching non-skippable anti-piracy ads and copyright notices on regular DVDs, two minutes of just a black screen would definitely be my option of choice.
As many people here and on many other sites have already pointed out, these "backwards compatibility" measures are impossible to implement for anyone except MSFT and those who were able to see the actual code under some chain-linked NDA.
Let's say, OOXML gets implemented as a standard and every word-processing application implements it, what keeps MSFT from just applying a little patch to MS Office to make heavy use of these backwards compat tags? Since the majority of users are still using MS Office this would have dramatic consequences for those who don't
If, say, in fifty years Linux has taken over the world, MSFT is in smithereens because someone decided to revise the antitrust case and MS Office is out of use for several years, nobody will be able to read those OOXML documents anymore, unless MSFT releases the complete specifications.
Therefore OOXML shouldn't be accepted as an ISO standard, because it can only be implemented completely by one party. You shouldn't even call it standard, if it can't be ensured that future generations will be able to read those documents without having to find an x86 Windows PC with MS Office installed!
On a side-note: If MSFT had really really been interested in providing backwards compatibility, they would have just written an application/Office plugin that converted old documents into OOXML without having to use some obfuscated tags. Instead they just squeezed these formatting instructions into their new standard to ensure a steady flow of money from people forced to use MS Office in order to view their documents.
They make CDs available for stealing, too. At least while no one is looking. Should we sue them too for allowing CDs to be stolen?
It's been "Pending" for two months, now...
...which is perfectly fine, because Ext3 is backwards compatible and Windows wouldn't make use of the journaling feature, anyway.
American billion, I suppose == Rest-of-the-world-milliard. Anything else would REALLY be mind-numbing. Imagine two hundred Windows installs per earth inhabitant...
Or like Stephen Hawking, looking at that one drunk photo ^^
Because there will always be the Alienware crowd.
That's what they said about the first Xenosaga episode, too. I still liked it the best ^^ Although episode 2 had a much better battle system.
Man, but I'd love to have some webs between my fingers! Or a few billions more brain cells... Or a bazillion T-Lymphocytes trying to kill me... On the other hand, such medication would indeed be great for all those people who were cut off from oxygen for too long and whose myocard cells usually go into apoptosis once they're re-oxygenated.
"Do not want!"
Most people like their car as a place where they still have some freedom and I don't think any of those people will like the idea of a car telling them how to accelerate and brake. If a hybrid car can save the same amount of fuel and still lets you drive the way YOU want, why even bother with that other option, anyway?
Now, I see it. And the Homepage got a little facelift, as well. Unfortunately, the repos still haven't been updated...
Neither the Website nor the repos know of this, yet... And yes, I ran the Update Manager with -c.
I believe, it only works on CRTs, if you pump up the resolution to the technical maximum. When I tried ClearType on a CRT (in 1024*768) a few years ago, it looked like crap.
The problem isn't sub-pixel rendering in general (if it was, any anti-aliasing feature would be covered by these patents). ClearType is taking avantake of the way of drawing pixels LCDs use (red, green, blue standing next to each other instead of being mixed together) to increase anti-aliasing even further. This technology is LCD-specific and patented by Microsoft.