They design those things so far in advance that they're pretty much obsolete as they're sitting on the launch pad. For all that the images coming back are pretty amazing, the CCD it's packing really isn't that great. If they started designing a new one now, by the time they go to launch it we'll all have lightfield 3-D infinitely zoomable cameras on our pocket-Watsons.

She probably could have made more just carving out a web site somewhere, hosting her own MP3s and throwing a paypal tip jar up. She couldn't have made much less. Except someone probably would have filed a DMCA takedown under the assumption that any MP3s hosted anywhere are a copyright violation. That's what the RIAA really wanted with that thing to begin with, a way to prevent individual artists from finding a way around the middlemen who are the only ones getting rich from the artists' work.

And all anyone can think to do with it is stick it on someone. Let the hand run free! Like Thing! Or that scene from the Evil Dead. THAT would be AWESOME!

Oh, yeah, IBM didn't help, and the attitude inside the company was that PCs were toys and if you wanted to do real computing or real multitasking you'd buy an RS6K and run AIX (At a minimum.) People wanted to run their windows apps, and for a while around the Warp timeframe, it seemed like Microsoft was rolling out new versions of DirectX and other APIs about once a week.

Too many people got too good at writing DirectX emulation layers. Obviously someone fell down on the job, or Valve wouldn't have managed a Linux port. Watch for new incompatible "standard", soon.

Cynical? This isn't my first rodeo. I watched them kill off OS/2, pretty much exactly the same way.

Well it's not just China, really, though being able to cut the air with a knife in Beijing is kind of an extreme example. I did a "Train-your-replacement" outsourcing gig with a company a decade or so ago and went to Romania a couple times as part of that. Timisoara, Romania reminded me a lot of Miami city without emissions controls. Inside buildings, everyone smoked. EVERYONE. Outside buildings, the car exhaust fumes were about equally as bad. By the end of a week there, my lungs hurt and I couldn't wait to get on the plane for some fresh air. Then they announce it's a smoking flight to London. Argh! We take breathable air and drinkable tap water for granted here in the USA. Try visiting someplace "civilized" that has neither, before whining too loudly about the regulations we have in place to make sure rivers don't catch on fire... again... Or try visiting someplace "not civilized" that not only has neither, and also has malaria mosquitoes! Hey, that could be the new slogan for Beijing -- "At least we don't have malaria mosquitoes!"

My magic hurricane rock has been working great ever since I moved to Colorado!

Here in ermer'ka, we don't have to chew the air because of the EPA. All the deregulation folks trying to close down the EPA should have to spend a month in Beijing, learning what it's like living without one. Just sayin'.

129 comments and you said everything that needed to be said on this story in the first post.

Encryption! Der!

Seems he learned his lesson at least, and actually removed the content. You know what would be funny? If the FBI asked him to keep the files to help with an on-going investigation.

And as a phone monkey you can't actually solve real problems. Solving problems will drive your call stats down too much, and low call stats will lead to your termination. The best possible outcome for you is that for whatever reason the customer should give up almost immediately and go away. Perhaps because they can sense the ineptitude oozing down the line at them. Those guys aren't rated on customer satisfaction or problems successfully resolved, They're rated on how many people they can convince to go away in an hour. If you hear that hopeful spark when that phone monkey asks you if you tried rebooting it (You will, if you listen for it,) that's why. If you do get someone who knows what he's doing, I guarantee you that person will not be there long. That sort of person doesn't last long in phone support.

Oh no! Life tortures you quite enough. Alas, most of your shot-receiving takes place during that time when you don't yet know what real pain is. For most of us, anyway. I would just offer the advice "Enjoy the time when getting a shot is all it takes to make you cry. Hopefully there aren't worse things in your future."

He just doesn't have any context. When I was 12, I had a baby tooth extracted by an air force dentist. Apparently the root had wrapped around the adult tooth behind it. No matter how much novacaine he injected into my head, I still felt what he was doing. And that fucker didn't want to come out. I lost track of time, but it was the worst pain I have ever experienced. If I had a choice between that again or a bullet to the head, I'd take the bullet. After that, shots, not so bad.

A couple years back I had a scrotal abscess. The doctor had to inject the local into my nutsack so he could drain the thing. That was in the running for the second worst pain I have ever experienced. But later on when he was scooping me out like a fucking cantaloupe, he apologized for causing me so much discomfort, and my reply was "I've had worse." Had to have an open wound and a... "crotch wick'... for 8 weeks after that.

IIRC copyright applies to any file you author, whether you explicitly claim it or not. I tend to assume that files without an explicit license are copyrighted and should not be used in a project or even viewed, if I'm planning to write a similar package.

So what's to stop some company from taking your code and making changes to it SHOULD be their lawyers, who should realize that without an explicit license available using those files would be a huge legal liability. Or your lawyers, later on, when you're proving the point.

Anyway, this same argument is the one typically applied to the BSD license, and the answer is, presumably, the developer doesn't give a shit about that. Certainly Microsoft, AT&T and SCO all made bank off coded licensed under that license, and I didn't hear any of the guys who wrote the original code complaining.

If it were IBM, the problem report would be closed with "bursting into flames is working as designed" for this particular product, and that if that is not a desired feature of the product, please submit a design-change request, the form for which can be found in the attic, in the file cabinet with the sign "beware of leopard" on it. There is an actual leopard down there. And the lights are burned out. They have been, since the last janitor met his demise finding out about the leopard.