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Earthquake Warning Issued For Central Oklahoma 127

Posted by Unknown Lamer
from the cthulhu-rises dept.


Comment: Re:I can see their response already (Score 1) 97

Comcast charges $8/month for a cable modem rental, and I bought my DOCSIS 3.0 modem for $80, which puts the break even point at ten months, for me. Considering that they'd likely jack up the price before then, the break even point could well come before ten months.

Comment: Re:Why? (Score 2) 465

by SCPRedMage (#46416949) Attached to: Apple Refuses To Unlock Bequeathed iPad

They're not. They're in charge with helping you regain control of your own property.

The point here, as has been pointed out here, is that Apple wants proof that the deceased woman in question is, in fact, the owner of that Apple ID. Yes, it's more than a little draconian, and they should have better means of making that connection other than a freaking court order, but the fact of the matter is that security and convenience are on a sliding scale, and while it may be just a tad too far towards security, they're still trying to look out for their customers.

Comment: Re:Um... (Score 4, Informative) 201

by SCPRedMage (#45693635) Attached to: Under the Hood of SteamOS

Umm... no, no it wasn't. Valve hired the guys behind Narbacular Drop, who then worked at Valve to create Portal using many of the same concepts, but Portal was developed entirely by people who earned their paychecks working for Valve at the time they were working on the game.

In other words, Valve didn't buy the game, they bought the team.

Comment: Re:Well.. (Score 5, Insightful) 519

by SCPRedMage (#45439231) Attached to: Woman Facing $3,500 Fine For Posting Online Review

It's only "unenforceable" from a legal standpoint, but before it ever even sees a courtroom, it's already intimidated enough people to raise the company's BBB rating from an F to a B, and ruined other people's credit; the couple from TFA have been turned down for loans due to the credit hit they've taken because these guys sent that $3500 "penalty" to collections.

Why pay court costs for a judge to enforce your schemes when you can get the credit bureaus to do it for free?

Comment: Re:Welcome to the rest of the world (Score 5, Informative) 312

Actually, the law HAS changed. Originally, copyright was for a much shorter time (14 years, renewable for another 14 years if the creator was still alive), but in modern times the length has been pushed so far that the "for limited times" part of the constitutional clause that gives the U.S. government the authority to CREATE a copyright law is, for all intents and purposes, irrelevant. Anything you see created today will still be copyrighted long after you die.

Unfortunately, this makes the public domain a nearly worthless concept; copyright is limited so that things will eventually become public domain, but with copyrights so long, nothing relevant to modern society belongs in it. Hell, we have entire forms of media that will never have a single item enter public domain until you are dead, buried, and dust.


Google Play Services Supplants Android As Google's "Platform" 182

Posted by Unknown Lamer
from the bad-problem-bad-solution dept.
exomondo writes "Google has a plan to circumvent the problem of fragmentation of its Android operating system across the installed base by using its proprietary, closed-source Google Play Services. Play Services is a privileged service that runs on Android and provides the sort of functionality to applications that would generally be seen in operating system updates like cloud backup, remote wipe, push messaging, etc... This service can be updated silently and independently of the operating system and runs on almost every version of Android out there allowing Google to add functionality to Android devices without having to go through the OEMs so having an up-to-date version of Android is looking like less of a necessity." It might be worth noting that Google originally rejected copyleft in favor of permissive licensing in the name of giving OEMs and carriers more control over Android on their devices.

Anything free is worth what you pay for it.