The real story is the massive STFC spending cuts that impact their group. Those spending cuts were announced the same day, and are being blogged about by the same folks:
http://herschelmission.wordpress.com/2009/12/16/so-here-it-is-physics-doomsday/
http://herschelmission.wordpress.com/2009/12/16/blood-on-the-floor-for-uk-physicists/
20% cuts here, 15% cuts there, and soon enough you won't have enough money to fund anything at all.
Or.... the daughter of Waldo AND Carmen Sandiego?
Same thing applied to me, some decades earlier; I learned to read, write and spell before kindergarten in order to be able to beat an old Atari game (Castle Hexagon).
most games don't require reading in order to figure out what to do next; with Castle Hexagon, you had to know what you had picked up, and you had to know the room to which it belonged.. it was fairly logical, but if you couldn't read the name of the item you were holding or the title of the room you were in, you wouldn't get far.
Researchers (and sci-fi writers) always talk about things like gigantic space elevators and star-encompassing spheres; works that would take an entire world's focus (and several generations of dedicated work) to accomplish. I always figured that those were unaccomplishable dreams...
But then I read this story and got to thinking... Why not make a gigantic net and scoop up all that garbage?
They've never said 100 is the max level. That statement is GENERALLY attributed to the fake "expansion list" that people keep linking to. Here's the original source for that list:
http://wow.allakhazam.com/forum.html?forum=21;mid=119012268058738816
It's fake. The 1st expansion, Burning Crusade went live in January 2007 -- but Wrath of the Lich King was announced (INCLUDING zone information) in August of that year. By September, all of that info was everywhere, including approximate level of the zones, preliminary notes about possible raid zones, etc. Basically, the list used readily available data based on RPG sourcebook material, in-game quests, and instruction manuals for previous Warcraft games.
Further, even if the list was legitimate: It makes no sense why a multi-billion dollar company would continue to base its video game's success or failure on a sole wordpad document transformed into a PDF.
SIGINT isn't just data collection -- it's also data distribution. Make the person you're listening to think they're being listened to by another group, or exchange information with an informant without them knowing who "you" are, and without them suspecting anything's wrong with the transaction.
I heard a story once [citation needed], where "we" were feeding a terrorist fake info to relay to his friends, and the terrorist gobbled it up and told his superiors... which then changed the location of some meeting, which resulted in them getting blown up (with relatively fewer civilian casualties).
Whether Calixte's guilty or not (and whether or not he's committed any crime) the warrant wasn't requested because of a scary demon -- it was because there's a strong connection between Calixte and a (hate crime?) e-mail that was sent to the entire student body, and (possibly) because Calixte has apparently got a history of suspicious (criminal) activity previously:
On 1/27/09, "_____ advised Officer Eng that Mr. Calixte has changed grades for students by accessing the Boston College computer system." and on 1/28/09, "Mr. Calixte was also a suspect in a stolen Boston College laptop computer report I investigated previously."
After the outing e-mail, "Mr. Escalante told me
Basically, it's not Linux that got this kid in trouble, it's his own stupidity. And he's supposedly a smart CS student, to boot. Where were his 7 proxies?
A year or two ago, I was doing helpdesk stuff when a user called in regarding a phishing e-mail they'd received regarding some transaction in Africa. They wanted to know if it was legitimate, because it sounded (to him) like the business opportunity of a lifetime. I told him that it was a scam, and explained how the scam worked. He thought for a moment, and said "Yeah, maybe, but he's promising millions!" (uh oh)
I directed him to read up on some of the 419 anti-scam sites. We read the literature together, and discussed why these operations work, and why it's dangerous to respond to them, etc.
At the end of the call, despite having spent more than 45 minutes trying to dissuade him, and having read multiple stories that all had the same general flow, he remained skeptical of MY explanation that it was a scam. He wanted to believe it was legitimate, and so he believed it was legitimate.
I haven't spoken to him since, but some of my colleagues have. We came to the general consensus that he probably sent several thousand dollars to them before realizing it was fake.
Or imagine if you bought the latest edition of a "Call of Duty" game, only to find out the EULA stated it was illegal to play except on weekends?
Try playing WoW between 5am and 11am Pacific time on a Tuesday.
(For those who don't play WoW, that's typically the time when maintenance occurs, patches get deployed, etc.)
FTA:
Siy and Pearlman also expressed skepticism at the notion that these "dynamic, non-literal elements" constitute a distinct copyrighted work.
If I'm reading the trial order correctly (IANAL), it seems to cite the following cases in support of "non-literal elements" being copyrighted:
See Atari Games Corp. v. Oman, 888 F.2d 878, 884-85 (D.C. Cir. 1989); Midway Mfg. Co. v. Arctic Int'l, Inc., 704 F.2d 1009, 1011-12 (7th Cir. 1983); Williams Elec., Inc. v. Arctic Int'l, Inc., 685 F.2d 870, 874 (3d Cir. 1982); Stern Elecs., Inc. v. Kaufman, 669 F.2d 852, 855-56 (2d Cir. 1982)
What I'd like to see from Siy and Pearlman is a description of what these cases are, and why their citation is somehow irrelevant with regards to non-literal elements and copyright enforceability. The judge certainly seemed to think they applied. (Again, if I'm reading the order correctly. I might be wrong. Who knows.)
Sounds like it was actually the name of a product back then, from 1984. Check out Wikipedia regarding it:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KoalaPad/Painter
I also remember hearing it called that.
His shirt/pants/underwear/socks (whichever suits your fancy. Oh, hey, suits is another option!)
Kleeneness is next to Godelness.
