Slashdot

Well, it was the gameplay that killed it for me. I'm certainly not an ace gamer, but I can finish most shooters on "Normal" difficulty without too much of a problem. Every time I tried to take on a Big Daddy (which the game heavily implied you needed to do, shortly after demonstrating what badasses they are and how you should avoid them), I'd just end up wasting most of my ammo, and end up with a drill planted in my intestines.

Naturally, if I wanted to, I could just keep respawning and beat the damn thing to death with a wrench, but it felt like game was horribly balanced, and the designers reacted by removing any death penalty. One thing I really hated was the notion that you had to kill Big Daddies to get the Adam so you could... what? The game never told me. Kill more big daddies? Because I was doing just fine against all the other peons.

About the point that Ryan poisoned all the trees, and I got sent on some fetch quest, I got bored / irritated with the game and quit. It's too bad, I really wanted to like it. Shooters and RPGs are my two favorite genres, so it seemed like an instant winner to me.

Glad others enjoyed it, though. It certainly had great production values and a unique story, but it was just too annoying to play.

disincentives don't work either. at least this won't alienate customers if it doesn't work. also, the end of your example demonstrates the problem with the disincentive-based approach, not with the positive incentive-based approach.

i'd much rather developers take this tact than to make it illegal to sell used games/CDs/DVDs. at least this doesn't encroach on fair use rights and doesn't take an anti-consumer attitude.

What a fucking joke Slashdot has turned into with dumb fucking clowns like MojoRilla.

But it is hilarious to watch dumbfucks like this desperately trying spin a ten second or so delay for a short period of time into a crisis. Oh the Humanity!!!

LOL, what an idiot.

True, but ... WGA, where the "A" stands for "Advantage" assumes 100% server uptime. Are you saying Microsoft should have learned from themselves?

This definitely breaks First-sale Doctrine. coming straight from Wikipedia:

"In 1997 in Novell v. Network Trade Center 25 F. Supp. 2d 1218 (C.D. Utah 1997)[2] purchaser is an "owner" by way of sale and is entitled to the use and enjoyment of the software with the same rights as exist in the purchase of any other good. Said software transactions do not merely constitute the sale of a license to use the software. The shrinkwrap license included with the software is therefore invalid as against such a purchaser insofar as it purports to maintain title to the software in the copyright owner. Under the first sale doctrine, NTC was able to redistribute the software to end-users without copyright infringement. Transfer of a copyrighted work that is subject to the first sale doctrine extinguishes all distribution rights of the copyright holder upon transfer of title."

and

"In 2008, in Timothy S. Vernor v. Autodesk Inc.[2], a U.S. Federal District Judge in Washington rejected a software vendor's argument that it only licensed copies of its software, rather than selling them, and that therefore any resale of the software constituted copyright infringement. Judge Richard A. Jones cited first-sale doctrine when ruling that a reseller was entitled to sell used copies of the vendor's software regardless of any licensing agreement that might have bound the software's previous owners [3]."

I'm surprised you were modded funny instead of "interesting". Lets talk about off shore drilling for a minute: "The Hawkes say they were four weeks away from launching the "Deep Flight Challenger" when news came of Fossett's disappearance."

From: http://www.usatoday.com/money/industries/energy/2008-07-13-offshore-drilling_N.htm
Environmental hazard or energy bonanza: Oil and natural gas trapped beneath the USA's ocean floor mean different things to different people. As gasoline soars beyond $4 a gallon, President Bush and his would-be Republican successor, John McCain, see a viable source of domestic production. Democrat Barack Obama and the nation's environmentalists see a threat to pristine waters and beaches -- and little help at the pump from offshore drilling.

If you solve a problem, you cannot use it as an issue to win an election.

The University is moving to quash the subpoena; it is not a party to the action. As such, I don't believe that it has standing to make a motion regarding the substance of the litigation itself. In short, the University is watching out for its own interests, but that's because the rules prevent it from watching out for the interests of others.

Only, people are revolting

Indeed.

"how can a non-exclusive deal weaken yahoo"

My further entrenching a monopoly they compete with and making it far harder for new entrants of even existing market players to enter their space?

Oh, and why do you find it so hard to believe that Google would deliberately weaken its competitor? What if it was Microsoft brokering a similar deal with, say, Red Hat?

Seriously, enough with the "we love Google" rubbish. They're a profit seeking company, just like any other, and they don't play fair, they just have a better handle on how to direct your attention to the bones they throw at the FOSS community while they go about their business.

A few years ago, while browsing around the library downtown, I
had to take a piss. As I entered the john a big beautiful all-American
football hero type, about twenty-five, came out of one of the booths.
I stood at the urinal looking at him out of the corner of my eye as he
washed his hands. He didn't once look at me. He was "straight" and
married - and in any case I was sure I wouldn't have a chance with
him.

As soon as he left I darted into the booth he'd vacated,
hoping there might be a lingering smell of poo poo and even a seat still
warm from his sturdy young rear end. I found not only the smell but the
poo poo itself. He'd forgotten to flush. And what a treasure he had left
behind. Three or four beautiful specimens floated in the bowl. It
apparently had been a fairly dry, constipated poo poo, for all were fat,
stiff, and ruggedly textured. The real prize was a great feast of turd
- a nine inch gastrointestinal triumph as thick as a man's wrist.

I knelt before the bowl, inhaling the rich brown fragrance and
wondered if I should obey the impulse building up inside me. I'd
always been a heavy rimmer and had lapped up more than one little
clump of poo poo, but that had been just an inevitable part of eating rear end
and not an end in itself. Of course I'd had jerk-off fantasies of
devouring great loads of it (what rimmer hasn't), but I had never done
it. Now, here I was, confronted with the most beautiful five-pound
turd I'd ever feasted my eyes on, a sausage fit to star in any fantasy
and one I knew to have been hatched from the rear end in a top hat of the world's
handsomest young stud.

Why not? I plucked it from the bowl, holding it with both
hands to keep it from breaking. I lifted it to my nose. It smelled
like rich, ripe limburger (horrid, but thrilling), yet had the
consistency of cheddar. What is cheese anyway but milk turning to poo poo
without the benefit of a digestive tract?

I gave it a lick and found that it tasted better then it
smelled. I've found since then that poo poo nearly almost does.

I hesitated no longer. I shoved the loving thing as far into
my mouth as I could get it and sucked on it like a big brown cock,
beating my meat like a madman. I wanted to completely engulf it and
bit off a large chunk, flooding my mouth with the intense, bittersweet
flavor. To my delight I found that while the water in the bowl had
chilled the outside of the turd, it was still warm inside. As I chewed
I discovered that it was filled with hard little bits of something I
soon identified as peanuts. He hadn't chewed them carefully and they'd
passed through his body virtually unchanged. I ate it greedily,
sending lump after peanutty lump sliding scratchily down my throat. My
only regret was the donor of this feast wasn't there to wash it down
with his piss.

I soon reached a terrific climax. I caught my cum in the
cupped palm of my hand and drank it down. Believe me, there is no more
delightful combination of flavors than the hot sweetness of cum with
the rich bitterness of poo poo.

Afterwards I was sorry that I hadn't made it last longer. But
then I realized that I still had a lot of fun in store for me. There
was still a clutch of virile turds left in the bowl. I tenderly fished
them out, rolled them into my handkerchief, and stashed them in my
briefcase. In the week to come I found all kinds of ways to eat the
poo poo without bolting it right down. Once eaten it's gone forever
unless you want to filch it third hand out of your own rear end in a top hat. Not an
unreasonable recourse in moments of desperation or simple boredom.

I stored the turds in the refrigerator when I was not using
them but within a week they were all gone. The last one I held in my
mouth without chewing, letting it slowly dissolve. I had liquid poo poo
trickling down my throat for nearly four hours. I must have had six
orgasms in the process.

I often think of that lovely young guy dropping solid gold out
of his sweet, pink rear end in a top hat every day, never knowing what joy it could,
and at least once did, bring to a grateful shiteater.

No, think a little harder.

Imagine a file system that names the files with strings of bytes.

It is absolutely vital that if I ask for a list of files and then try to open them, that this all work, no matter what byte sequence has managed to get in there as a filename.

It is also *nice* but nowhere near as vital that I be able to show these names to users and they read them as Unicode strings.

Oil, money and hi-tech? Maybe you should think before you write?

Well, first of all, 2.6 and 3.0 come out at the same time and share many of the same new features... so there's no "just wait for 3.0" possible, it's either/or right now.

The advantage is that if you have a big pile of 2.5 code right now, you can slowly turn on the "use 3.0 style" switches in 2.6 and migrate your code one little switch at a time over a long period of time.

That way, a few years from now when they decide to stop supporting new features in the 2.x path and you really "must have" some new feature in the 3.x path, it will be significantly easier for you to switch if you've turned on the "use 3.0" switches previously.

You sir are a retarded internet christian filling rooms with deceitful knowledge and propaganda. Get your revelations outta here

I guess your church ran out of tin foil hats and Thorazine.