Comment Other similiar stories websites I've enjoyed (Score 1) 99
Two websites I've enjoyed for tech horror stories are:
Tech Tales [http://www.techtales.com/]
Clients From Hell [http://clientsfromhell.net/]
Comment Re:My question is (Score 4, Interesting) 179
Don't they have bigger issues/bad guys to take care of than some college student POSSIBLY playing PIRATED VIDEO GAMES?
Drugs, gangs, violence, terrorism, rape, murders...need I go on?
last time I checked the courts and jails were rather full...
Reminds me of the Simpsons X-Files episode:
Mulder: There's been another unsubstantiated UFO sighting in the Heartland of America. We've gotta get there right away.
Scully: Well... gee, Mulder, there's also this report of a shipment of drugs and illegal weapons coming into New Jersey tonight.
Mulder: [scoffs] I hardly think the FBI is concerned with matters like that.
---
DreamMaster.
Comment Re:'Never forwarded that information' (Score 2) 179
Basically, they lied. dipshits. And how the hell did that Rosario guy knew that cd was pirated in the first place anyway ? did he understand it from its smell ? cd wasnt labeled ? what if the guy made a backup ? huh ?
That's a very good question, and precisely what I was wondering myself - how could they be so sure that it was a pirated game, and not a backup of a game he legitimately owned? Given the original article said that they had to prove he knew/was breaking the law, I can't see how they could prove that it was indeed a pirated game. Or did they previously execute a search warrant to see if he had the original disc for the game or not?
DreamMaster.
Comment How about Switzerland (Score 4, Funny) 1020
Maybe he should move to Switzerland. If the example set by Roman Polanski.is anything to go by, the country's a haven for accused sex offenders.
Submission + - Garriott wins $28 million lawsuit against NCsoft 1
UgLyPuNk writes: Lord British himself, Richard Garriott, has won a US$28 million lawsuit against game developers NCsoft Corp. It seems that Garriott felt NCsoft didn’t handle his 2008 departure from the company in the appropriate manner – it came down to he said / they said: he said he was fired, NCsoft said he left voluntarily.
Submission + - Model describes universe with no big bang (physorg.com)
JustABlitheringIdiot writes: From the article:
By suggesting that mass, time, and length can be converted into one another as the universe evolves, Wun-Yi Shu has proposed a new class of cosmological models that may fit observations of the universe better than the current big bang model. What this means specifically is that the new models might explain the increasing acceleration of the universe without relying on a cosmological constant such as dark energy, as well as solve or eliminate other cosmological dilemmas such as the flatness problem and the horizon problem.
By suggesting that mass, time, and length can be converted into one another as the universe evolves, Wun-Yi Shu has proposed a new class of cosmological models that may fit observations of the universe better than the current big bang model. What this means specifically is that the new models might explain the increasing acceleration of the universe without relying on a cosmological constant such as dark energy, as well as solve or eliminate other cosmological dilemmas such as the flatness problem and the horizon problem.
Submission + - Sometimes It's OK To Steal My Games. (blogspot.com)
spidweb writes: One Indie developer has written a nuanced article on how software piracy affects him, approaching the issue from the opposite direction. He lists the ways in which the widespread piracy of PC games helps him. From the article, "You don't get everything you want in this world. You can get piles of cool stuff for free. Or you can be an honorable, ethical being. You don't get both. Most of the time. Because, when I'm being honest with myself, which happens sometimes, I have to admit that piracy is not an absolute evil. That I do get things out of it, even when I'm the one being ripped off." The article also tries to find a middle ground between the Piracy-Is-Always-Bad and Piracy-Is-Just-Fine sides of the argument that might enable single-player PC games to continue to exist.
Submission + - Sky UK HD boxes switch over to open source (sky.com)
jogu writes: Sky have just started rolling out over the air updates to their SkyHD boxes. Big news in the new update is they seem to have moved from OpenTV's closed OS over to linux — along with many of the common associated components: xfree86, busybox, ISC dhcp. They seemed to be going out their way to comply fully with the GPL and other licenses. It raises all sorts of questions — why have Sky done this now? Will this open the way to a healthy modding community?
Obama DOJ Sides With RIAA Again In Tenenbaum 528
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "Despite having had some time to get their act together, Obama's Department of Justice has filed yet another brief defending the RIAA's outlandish statutory damages theory — that someone who downloaded an mp3 with a 99-cent retail value, causing a maximum possible damages of 35 cents, is liable for from $750 to $150,000 for each such file downloaded, in SONY BMG Music Entertainment v. Tenenbaum. The 25- page brief (PDF) continues the DOJ's practice of (a) ignoring the case law which holds that the Supreme Court's due process jurisprudence is applicable to statutory damages, (b) ignoring the law review articles to like effect, (c) ignoring the actual holding of the 1919 case they rely upon, (d) ignoring the fact that the RIAA failed to prove 'distribution' as defined by the Copyright Act, and (e) ignoring the actual wording and reasoning of the Supreme Court in its leading Gore and Campbell decisions. Jon Newton of p2pnet.net attributes the Justice Department's 'oversights' to the 'eye-popping number of people [in its employ] who worked for, and/or are directly connected with, Vivendi Universal, EMI, Warner Music and Sony Music's RIAA.'"
Comment Re:Designing a SIMS home-improvement (Score 2, Funny) 346
Reminds me of one of my all time favourite comics, from the www.vgcats.com website:
http://www.vgcats.com/comics/?strip_id=122
Titled 'Fire bad, FIRE BAD!'
EFF Launches TOS Tracker 65
stoolpigeon writes with this quote from the EFF:
"'Terms of Service' policies on websites define how Internet businesses interact with you and use your personal information. But most web users don't read these policies — or understand that the terms are constantly changing. To track these ever-evolving documents, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is launching TOSBack: a 'terms of service' tracker for Facebook, Google, eBay, and other major websites. ... The issue of terms-of-service changes — and how and why they are made — was highlighted earlier this year when Facebook modified its terms of use. Facebook users worried that the change gave the company the right to use members' content indefinitely. After a user revolt, Facebook announced that it would restore the former terms while it worked through the concerns users had raised."
Comment Re:like every other sales demo (Score 1) 210
I can't agree more wholeheartedly with the above (unclear specifications). I see it all the time in my business too.
If you go to the folllowing page: http://slashweb.org/programming/25-best-programmer-comics.html [top 25 programmer jokes], one is the classic Dilbert strip where Alice tries to nail down a client's specifications... one of my favourite jokes of all time.
Comment Re:QFG (Score 1) 78
Well, the Quest for Glory series used the later Sierra SCI engine rather than the AGI engine. Luckily, the ScummVM project has recently merged in FreeSCI, which will, eventually, enable users to play all the Sierra SCI games on all the various systems and consoles that ScummVM supports.
Comment Re:SCI (Score 3, Informative) 78
The most well known attempt to create an interpreter for SCI games, FreeSCI, has recently been merged into the ScummVM project. Development has been going on rapidly since then, and some SCI games are already completable, with support for more to follow.
Note though that this is only in the daily SVN builds, not in the 0.13 stable builds.
Comment The Wii MotionPlus is an expansion device (Score 4, Interesting) 153
You know.. I was all ready to hate them for not making the new sensor backwards compatible with older games, but then it occurred to me that it says that the new motion sensor hooks into the base of the existing Wiimote. It may simply be that the connection there for peripherals/nunchuks doesn't allow the new sensor to supercede the existing Wiimote movement sensors.. that may be why only new games will be able to make use of the extra information.
Of course we could then always argue that Nintendo should have re-designed the Wiimote from scratch with the new sensor embedded if that's the case. If so, I would hope that they do, because there are a lot of existing Wii games that would benefit from the extra sensitivity.
