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Comment Re:Using the truth to bolster a lie (Score 1) 291

Wish I had saved some of the points I had yesterday for you.
Overselling is a horrible tactic, and I'd like to see it done away with too. I understand that we aren't paying for dedicated 10Mbps, but they can't expect 20Mbit to cover more than 5 people reliably. I'd love to know what their actual load ratios are.
More importantly, this is not just a "peak traffic" issue with Bell. They significantly downgrade a large portion of traffic from 4pm to 2am. That's almost half the day! It is neither "narrowly targetted" nor "minimally interfering."
Pretty disgusting, if you ask me.

Comment Text vs. Graphic Ads (Score 4, Insightful) 615

I don't mind Text Only ads in out of the way places on a page. Gmails right-side ads don't bother me at all, and often include actually helpful links.

What I do mind, is Graphic Ads that disrupt the layout of the page, or the flow as I am scrolling to read. Completely unacceptable.

I would be willing to allow select pages to display text ads that are carefully placed to minimize interference if I only want the content while at the same time providing helpful suggestions when I might want them. Is that too much to ask? I think it might be...

Comment What about the Rental business? (Score 1) 242

I'm surprised it didn't appear in this discussion at all (that I could find when searching the text). They are effectively letting you borrow a used game for a week for $10, then cycling it again.

I don't think Blockbuster would be to happy to hear that a given console publisher (or all of them) has opted for digital distribution only. I'd be pretty pissed too, because then I wouldn't get to play games that are fun but not worth buying, just a rental.
Toys

Lego Loses Its Unique Right To Make Lego Blocks 576

tsa writes "The European Department of Justice has decided that the Danish company Lego does not have exclusive rights to the lego building block anymore (sorry, it's in Dutch). Lego went to court after a Canadian firm had made blocks that were so like lego blocks that they even fit the real blocks made by Lego. The European judge decided that the design of the lego blocks is not protected by European trademarks and so anyone can make the blocks." If true, hopefully this will open doors for people interested in inexpensive bulk purchase of bricks of specific sizes and colors. Perhaps at long last I can build a life-sized Hemos statue for my office.
Businesses

How 10 Iconic Tech Products Got Their Names 247

lgmac writes "Think Windows Azure is a stupid name? Ever wonder how iPod, BlackBerry and Twitter got their names? Author Tom Wailgum goes inside the process of creating tech product names that are cool but not exclusionary, marketable, and most of all, free of copyright and trademark gotchas. Here's the scoop on ten iconic tech products and how they got their monikers, plus a chat with the man responsible for naming Azure, BlackBerry, and more. (What's the one he wishes he'd named but didn't? Google.)"
Businesses

Interest Growing For Pre-Paid Game Cards 70

Worlds in Motion is running an interview with GMG Entertainment, a company finding success marketing pre-paid "digital currency cards" used online for games and other entertainment services. Customers and retailers alike are enjoying the simplicity and utility of the cards, and GMG suggests that this segment of the industry will only continue to grow: "I estimate this year that you'll see EA enter this space for some of their games, and a few other big names are absolutely interested. In fact we're in final negotiations with a couple of recognizable names. We tend to estimate the size of the total pre-paid gaming card business when we do our numbers, and this year we're looking to something between $75-100 million dollars in sales across North America. We see that going to $250-300 million in 2009 and being in the region of a half-billion by 2010. We see this market growing dramatically in the next two to five years."
Software

An Open Source Legal Breakthrough 292

jammag writes "Open source advocate Bruce Perens writes in Datamation about a major court victory for open source: 'An appeals court has erased most of the doubt around Open Source licensing, permanently, in a decision that was extremely favorable toward projects like GNU, Creative Commons, Wikipedia, and Linux.' The case, Jacobsen v. Katzer, revolved around free software coded by Bob Jacobsen that Katzer used in a proprietary application and then patented. When Katzer started sending invoices to Jacobsen (for what was essentially Jacobsen's own work), Jacobsen took the case to court and scored a victory that — for the first time — lays down a legal foundation for the protection of open source developers. The case hasn't generated as many headlines as it should."

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