Comment Re:huh? (Score 1) 357
And the north had pizza.
-Peter
Comment Re:Rice paddy paradox (Score 1) 357
Wow, some people don't have any sense of history. Hello? decimation (or more) of the population of west africa due to slavery and natural resource exploitation over the last 5 centuries ring any bells?
-Peter
Doctorow Suggests Simple EULA Solution 158
Cory Doctorow, writing for the Guardian, has suggested an easy way for EULAs to become more user-friendly and less of a legal quagmire. He recommends reducing agreements for games, music, and ebooks to simply: "Don't violate copyright law." Quoting:
"'Don't violate copyright law' has a lot going for it, but the best thing about it is what it signals to the purchaser, namely: 'You are not about to get screwed.' The copyright wars have produced some odd and funny outcomes, but I think the oddest was when the record industry began to campaign for more copyright education on the grounds that young people were growing up without the moral sensibility that they need to become functional members of society. ... it's not the entertainment industry's job to tell me what are and are not fair terms of sale for my downloads. If loaning an MP3 should be illegal, let them get a law passed (they're apparently good at that — the fact that they haven't managed it to date should tell you something about the reasonableness of the proposition)."
Comment Re:snow days (Score 1) 412
If you have a business, you can't *depend* on the internet working. You are *hoping* that the internet will work when you need it. Anyone "depending" on the internet working is in for some serious disappointment over the long haul. If you need to depend on something, you have to buy redundant private lines from different providers and verify that it runs point-to-point, and even then you're not going to get 5 nine's.
Doesn't anyone on
The fundamental issue that "best effort" delivery of packets is misleading isn't going to be addressed any time soon. "Best effort" really means "look, your link will be up, and we'll shove it out one of our interfaces, but where it goes from there is anyone's guess".
-Peter
Left 4 Dead DLC, SDK Announced 66
Today Valve announced plans for Left 4 Dead's first DLC, called The L4D Survival Pack. It will include a new game mode and two campaigns for Versus mode. The new content is coming to both the PC and Xbox 360 versions of the game (a PS3 port to the base game still seems unlikely). The press release goes on to say, "In addition, for PC gamers and aspiring developers, the first Left 4 Dead release for the Source Software Development Kit (Source SDK) will allow the creation of custom Left 4 Dead campaigns that will be discoverable via L4D's matchmaking system. The SDK update is also due for release this spring, and is free of charge to all owners of L4D on the PC." The Opposable Thumbs blog also reports on a way to play Left 4 Dead in 3D.
Tech Companies That Won't Survive 2009 385
buzzardsbay writes "Fresh off their annual market survey, eWEEK channel folks have compiled the list of tech vendors their readers think will fail, falter, or be sold off in 2009. It's important to note that these aren't the opinions of the magazine or its editors. The list comes from folks who work in IT, mostly technology resellers, who are out in the field selling, installing and maintaining this stuff. If there were ever canaries in the tech coal mine, they'd be these service and solution providers who live and die by the slightest shift in the markets. Some of the companies on this list, like Sun and AMD, are shocking because of their size. Others, like CA and Symantec, not so surprising." What other companies are headed for implosion, or should be if all were right with the universe?
Are My Ideas Being Stolen? If So, What Then? 508
BinaryGrind writes "I just got started taking Computer Science classes at my local university and after reading Universities Patenting More Student Ideas I felt I needed to ask: How do I tell if any of my projects while attending classes will be co-opted by my professors or the university itself and taken away from me? Is there anything I can do to prevent it from happening? What do I need to do to protect myself? Are there schools out there that won't take my work away from me if I discover TheNextBigThing(TM)? If it does happen is there anything I can do to fight back? The school I'm attending is Southern Utah University. Since it's not a big university, I don't believe it has a big research and development department or anything of that ilk. I'm mostly wanting to cover my bases and not have my work stolen from me."
Comment Re:Internetworking with TCP/IP (Score 1) 517
Oh, agreed! I got this used and it was such a good reference!
-Peter
Comment Re:Speaking of C (Score 1) 517
I've never found van der Lindens book of any use. I think that his focus on puns and asides detracts a lot from the content. I recall that topics that were about 80% explained, but needed an extra 15% to be clear, would instead receive a closing anecdote that had nothing to do with the topic.
I found that "Pointers on C" by Kenneth Reek was a far better book. More thorough and careful in explaining details, and with fewer distractions.
-Peter
Too Good To Ignore — 6 Alternative Browsers 291
bsk_cw writes "With the exception of Google's Chrome (which got attention because it was, after all, Google), most of the alternative browsers out there tend to get lost in the shuffle. Computerworld asked three of their writers to take some lesser-known browsers out for a spin and see how they do. They looked at six candidates: Camino (for the Mac), Maxthon (for the PC), OmniWeb (for the Mac), Opera (both the Mac and the PC versions) and Shiira (for the Mac)." It would have been more interesting if they included some popular open source, Linux-friendly browsers like Konqueror or Epiphany, as well.
Comment Re:"Crafty chick" (Score 2, Insightful) 518
Maybe not being an a-hole, but history shows that if something is truly DIY, the patent system doesn't impose a barrier to doing it yourself, just to doing it and selling it. See the history of the cotton gin for what I'm talking about.
I suspect that they see the business as making the varnish/dye/ink being used, and kits, which does make sense if selling that is economical, and in a few decades the original patent expires, though I'm sure there will be updates.
-Peter
Submission + - Are there any new motherboards without a TPM?
An anonymous reader writes: For those of us who don't want any piece of "treacherous computing" in our PC's, that means not having a TPM chip on the motherboard. That's easy enough if you're using an older computer, but what about the latest offerings? Are there any late-model motherboards or laptops being sold that do not have a TPM chip?
