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The Basics of EULAs
Garthilk writes "Blizzard recently made a bit of press when they announced that they would be actively enforcing their End User License agreement and prohibit the third party sale of game items and characters. Many people don't believe these clickthrough EULAs to be enforceable contracts. Thankfully Don Shelkey from the Corporate Finance and Technology section of the law firm Buchanan Ingersoll stops by to give us the low down. Mind you he is speaking on his own behalf and not on behalf any of his clients."
One only need look at Diablo 2 to know why they don't want a mini economy in the game. In D2, SOJs (Stone of Jordan, ring) became the in game currency. One can go online and purchase them for about $1 a pop. SOJs were and still are a fairly high level accessory, and once players started trading them, individuals started duplicating them, making a rare, high level item into an easily attainable high level item. After a few years of inflation, Blizzard finally decided to step in and allowed you to give up your SOJs, and by doing so, could trigger a world event (Uber Diablo, that when killed, drops and extremely rare and valuable jewel).
Fundamentally OOP, XML, RDBMS are very different: RDBMS (relational databases) basically have no true classes, in that you can't inherit 1 table from another. XML can have class-like structures, but they are assigned to an entire document as a whole (through DTDs). OOP has true classes all the way.
Today, these technologies are like oil, water and, well, something else- The next big advances in programming, I think, will come when people learn to make these ideas come together seamlessly- People will say that they already can do this, but I think it is very clear that they don't. C-Omega is Micro$oft's starting salvo in this new technology battle.