Comment "Radical Transformation" (Score 2) 357
Isn't this a good enough reason not to do it at all?
"Even" was me being sarcastic. Also, the law allows for massive statutory damages like this. Sympathy would be deciding that a fair punishment would be a fine of a few bucks.
While it seems absolutely insane that an individual can be sued for so much for something so inconsequential, I have to say that she really made it easy to side with the RIAA.
If it weren't for her destruction of evidence and blatant perjury, the courts might be likely to have some sympathy for her. Instead, she insulted the courts in a way that made Hans Reiser look well grounded. It was obvious to anyone following the trial that she was the one sharing the files, and while she didn't need to volunteer that information necessarily, the deliberate obfuscation (returned hard drives, etc.) put her on the wrong side of the line.
I think this is a terrible precedent that was set, but really, I'm not surprised. The RIAA, of course, will never see their money, but then Jammie Thomas will never own a material possession again, either, so I guess it's even.
Actually, I'd put TMNT up as an example of a popular NES sidescroller that is truly awful. I remember it being hard, but entertaining at the time, mainly because I was obsessed with the cartoon. I bought it for the Virtual Console when it first came out, and realized that what made the game hard wasn't clever puzzles or enemy scripts, but bad level design combined with terrible, laggy controls.
I remember several places that required perfect mastery of controls that weren't responsive enough to begin with. It's like the obligatory action sequence in every stealth game, or the escort mission in the action game with bad AI, except that the entire game is like that.
Maybe people here should actually read the article before commenting on it. The article isn't just your average list of top ten games from the '80s, or "boy, games sure suck right now" rant. The author actually lays out some decent guidelines for what makes a good sidescroller, given the benefit of experience.
So many of the posts seem to be parrotting the "nostalgia" line, while refusing to acknowledge that some of those games were just plain *good*. Super Mario Bros. 3 and Mega Man 2 are good games, and the existence of Pac Land doesn't make them any less good. The article does a pretty good job of explaining why.
Look, I've been on that end of the argument before. Yes, I do think it's important to follow security guidelines, but it's still difficult to convince management of this, and they're the ones paying the bills.
Unless a customer specifically says, "we need to be able to run as a Limited User," proper security compliance is going to fall into one of those "nice to have" areas. If it works as Administrator, and the customer is fine with that, then the company is going to want you to work on something else.
I didn't mean to come off as anti-Microsoft. I'm just saying from the company's perspective, this really looks like Microsoft is coming down from on high to unilaterally tell everyone to change their software that was written 10 years ago, and worked perfectly well back then.
And I'm accusing the parent of trolling because this is the exact situation the GP was talking about, which he completely ignored in favor of name calling. Just because somebody's on the opposing side of the argument does not make it okay to reply without reading his post. Even if it is Slashdot.
You're trolling, aren't you.
In most companies, insubordination is a fireable offense. If your manager tells you to implement a feature, you either do it, or provide a good reason not to. Either way, at the end of the day, it's your manager's call.
If you're writing code for the first time, sure, get it right. If you've already got code, and it works, it's going to be a really hard sell to change it just because Microsoft published a memo.
What is research but a blind date with knowledge? -- Will Harvey