Slashdot Mirror

Agram asks: "I bought the Sunflowers' 1503AD game practically as soon as it came out, since my wife and I loved to play the old 1602AD together via LAN. 1503AD's expanded multiplayer feature was touted all over the internet, yet when I bought the game, for a costly $52, I was very unpleasantly surprised that it had no multiplayer mode at all. Despite the continuous claims that the company is working on the MP patch, we're now over 7 months away from the initial release, the game now sells for a measly $15, and I have yet to play a single second of it, as I have no interest in the single player experience. My attempts at communication with the company led to nothing but dead-ends and unprovoked mistreatment. Unfortunately, this is not a unique occurrence in today's software entertainment industry, where atrocious lack of support is growing rampant and is increasingly coupled with ridiculous EULA's. I have therefore decided to finally exercise my end-user rights and pursue a class-action lawsuit against the company. I am now asking you, fellow Slashdot reader, for help in seeking answers to the following questions as, well assistance in assembling signatures for the class-action lawsuit."

"Here are my questions:

• How does one go about locating a reputable and internationally active law firm that could handle this case?
• What is the required number of the participants for a class-action lawsuit to be instantiated?
• Do you think that this course of action will yield any results?

If you have this game and feel the same like I do, I would like to urge you to please join the class-action lawsuit. Also, if you feel that you can and are willing to help out in any other shape or form (i.e. website maintenance etc.), please do not hesitate to contact me and/or visit the website stated below. I believe that this can be used to leverage further attempts at forcing the other entertainment software companies to support their product(s) as they ought to, as well as hopefully abolishing the obfuscated EULA's that relinquish them of any responsibility towards consumers. 1503AD is by no means an exception, but rather it is part of an unfortunate growing trend among the entertainment software companies.

For more details regarding this issue please visit this site."

shroudedmoon asks: "I'm looking for a solution to create a printable floor plan (line drawing) and 3D walkthrough of a house that I'm preparing to build. I've got a rough design on paper that I want to tweak on the screen, and then show to my architect/father so that he can create the finished and buildable blueprints. I've know there are consumer packages out there like 3D Home Architect from Broderbund, but I've heard that the graphics and navigation are less than spectacular. I also recall a Slashdot article, a couple of years ago, about the possibility of using the editor of one of the 3D shooters (Doom, maybe?) as an architectural tool, but I can't seem to locate it. Just curious if anyone out there has had any experience with anything similar, or which of the current 3D Shooters might have the best editor for something like this."

eberry writes "Despite over 70,000 respondents (.37% of the population) replying "Jedi" to an optional faith question on Australia's census, it will not become a recognized religion According to CNN "Australian officials say respondents could face a $1,000 fine for supplying false information. Citing, and I quote, "...people of a particular religious affiliation do not provide the correct information, certain facilities might not be built that otherwise would be." Personally I find their lack of faith disturbing." And I find the fact that this is on CNN even more so ;)

Concerned Citizen writes "cryptome has Microsoft's patent for Palladium. Including such gems as: 2. The computerized method of claim 1, wherein protecting the rights-managed data comprises: refusing to load the untrusted program into memory. 14. The computerized method of claim 1, further comprising: restricting a user to a subset of available functions for manipulating the rights-managed data. And I'm sure we'll all be coerced to agree to Palliadium during a future security patch agreement."

metallik writes: "A version of MAME for the Xbox game console has just been released. This release will only run on Xbox consoles equipped with a mod chip. MAME is the Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator, one of the more successful open source projects out there. It emulates over 3800 arcade machines, from Space Invaders to Mortal Kombat III, many of them perfectly. This is probably only the first of many such PC software projects to be ported to modded Xboxes. At $199 (plus modchip), the Xbox will soon be an extremely attractive set-top box (if not for the reasons Microsoft wanted it to be...)" A while ago, we posted about getting MAME to run on a developer-kit Xbox, but since mod chips are now available, this sounds like a more practical approach. Update: 06/23 18:40 GMT by T : Note: Thanks to Santeri Saarimaa for a note that the project is now hosted here instead.

Apparently, the Panasonic Showstopper is doing a fine job of living up to an unfortunate name, by -- yup -- stopping shows, thanks to the wonders of Macrovision. Ars Digita's long-heralded free online university has released its first lecture, and now you can use double coupons for presidential candidates! Well, you can trade like action figures. No, that's not right ... but is it wrong? Oh, and something else for you to do with your Palm, after work of course. All below.

Small-town boy makes good colnago writes "First discussed many months ago, here's ArsDigita's first streaming lecture on the design of computer languages."

This requires RealPlayer, by the way. Cool to see this effort bearing fruit -- I hope that Philip et al will serve as role models for a whole bunch of online learning centers, and they don't have to be computer-centric. Home schooling, anyone?

What we meant by "stop" was ... Reader Chris Reagan passed on this note regarding what initially sounds like an attractive toy: "There is a huge issue brewing with Panasonic Showstoppers preventing their owners from even watching TV. It appears they were over aggressive with their Macrovision copy protection and are blocking certain channels in certain markets.

Even though ReplayTV allowed Panasonic to modify their boxes they're passing the buck back to Panasonic, who in turn just say 'that's how we designed it.' They refuse to change or recall the defective product."

He also sent links to these AVS Forum on this topic -- it seems people don't like getting blue screens on that box, either:

• Damn Panasonic Copyright Protection Mistake
• Petition to Get Showstopper Recalled Re: Macrovision
• Petition to get REPLAY to remove copy protection
• How Replay TV can fix the Macrovision Bug ASAP...
• Can Macrovision be forced onto the ReplayTV branded units?

I'll trade you a handful of boring statists for a Harry Browne. We noted the other day the Nader-centric politics-in-2000-A.D. site nadertrader.org, but now, like all things Internet, the same model gets "borrowed" quickly and rebranded. HP LoveJet writes: "Expanding the concept popularized by NaderTrader, votexchange2000 enables you to swap your presidential vote with an appropriate person in another state, whether your preferred candidate is Nader, Browne, or even one of those Other People. Fascinating. And possibly not illegal. (?)"

Besides administer servers, track inventory, save the world and list groceries, of course. Dum2007 writes: "An open sourced Gameboy emulator for the Palm is available here. It might not be as feature-filled as Liberty, but it's free."

colnago writes: "The Motley Fool has an interesting article about lawsuits and their effect on capitalism. You may also read this as "lawsuits and their effect on technology." In any case the arguments are similar to what we've read here, but it's good to see the financial community on the same page as the nerds. One tidbit: 'How about picking a judge who used to work for you? Judge Chaplain (who presided over the first DVD trial and ruled in favor of the MPAA) was Time Warner's lawyer on DVD issues before he became a Judge.'"

latneM writes "On their latest Press Release 3Dfx unveils their latest video card. On top of "world's fastest 2D core" and twice the 3D power of Voodoo 2's in SLI, the PR says, "The Voodoo3 2000 and 3000 support both SGRAM and SDRAM memory, as well as the Windows 95/98/2000, MAC OS, Unix, and Linux operating systems." " Oh man that looks sweet. And they even mention Linux by name!

Jon C. was the first to send in a link to an msnbc story about WIPO, and the fact that it now has passed in the house. Cross your fingers and hope the senate is smarter.

Bill Mote wrote in to tell us about his KDM Installation Guide. He says its almost ready, but I'm sure he would love 2 bits from anyone with suggestions for improvement.

Bill Mote wrote in to tell us about his KDM Installation Guide. He says its almost ready, but I'm sure he would love 2 bits from anyone with suggestions for improvement.