they are making a mockery of the law by misleading technically inept judges, bringing fake evidence (ie: not evidence of anything, but they claim it is) I definitely agree with that. I also think that even when they are catching people uploading, they often use misrepresented evidence as a way to obtain information on who a certain IP address belongs to. If the judges understood the technology better, they would probably need more evidence to even obtain a name. Then if the defense attorneys understood the technology better, they could mount a much better defense, which is something that we've seen happen only rarely.
Basically, they catch someone running a P2P client, catch them downloading, sue them for "making available" and pretend that "making available"="distributing" and hopes they can find a judge that believes them. Actually, I think you're misunderstanding how they're catching them. They don't generally catch them downloading, they simply search for files just like anyone else, and find out who is offering them, then they pressure that person's ISP to give up their information. There have been honeypot downloads too, but that's not generally what they do because they need to see that the person is making the file available for download at the very least if they are to have any hope of convincing a judge to throw the book at them.
There is NO clause in the DMCA that mentions MAKING AVAILABLE. The DMCA specifically states DISTRIBUTING. The two are different things entirely. Nor is MAKING AVAILABLE the same as UPLOADING. I'm not arguing that the judge is correct in equating the two. I am saying that you're wrong when you said that they were being sued for downloading. That's not what happened. They were sued because they were making the files that they downloaded available for others to download. Whether that's technically illegal or not, that is what they are being sued for, not for downloading. This only started because the gp post was talking about "illegal downloads", so I pointed out that they weren't.
Wrong. You DO see the RIAA suing people for just downloading - by claiming they are uploading (distributing) by equating "making available" the same thing as "actually doing" - for instance in the lawsuit they recently won (as reported on/.) Yes, and they are being sued for the "making available" part, not the downloading. If someone was just leeching and not uploading, they wouldn't have a case.
What about people on p2p? They tend to expect illegal downloads, but some bands such as NIN have released music on these networks. How can anyone differentiate between legitimate and illegitimate downloads? You don't see the RIAA suing people for downloading, do you? Because it's not illegal. It's the uploading (distribution) that is illegal.
Boucher is one of the few guys in Congress that seems to have a brain and doesn't seem to be completely corrupt. He's also not representative of the Democratic party on copyright issues. I just wish he was as vocal as he is now back when the DMCA sailed through Congress with nary a hint of opposition from anyone. So while Boucher may be a good guy on this one, there's still too many democrats getting money from the entertainment industry. We need more like Boucher and less like Hollings.
That was done during the Republican majority years.
I sincerely doubt that if Hillary or Obama get into office, that these laws will survive in any part. Why would you doubt that the DMCA would survive? The democrats are even cozier with the entertainment industry than the republicans. Democrats were primarily responsible for the DMCA.
NBC has every right to bypass the retailer and sell the Timex watches of their own brand and wonder why they can't sell them at Rollex prices. I know that I, for one, only buy genuine Rollex watches. I get a good deal from the guy down on the corner. He works out of his overcoat, so he has low overhead and passes the savings on to me!:)
You don't understand how TV works. Some smart TV exec long ago noticed that viewers decide IN THIS ORDER (1) "I want to watch TV", (2) "What's on?" So because they operate in this order all you need is to have the show that sucks the least. That's how TV used to work. Now that we have DVRs that can record and store a hundred hours or more of programming, I simply set it to record the best shows and then watch them whenever I feel like watching TV. As this paradigm takes hold more and more, the quality of the shows will matter more and more.
"Honey, I could have spent $250 on a romantic dinner including a nice bottle of wine, and a babysitter for the kids. Instead, I spent it on a video game card, so I can get sucked into a video game, and end up ignoring you." It's not just priorities. You make it sound like everyone is in the same situation as you. Not everyone has kids. Those that do may have kids that enjoy computer games as well. Some of us have spouses that we enjoy playing games with too. In those cases, the money is well spent and we get a lot of enjoyment out of it.
No the copyright holders want to get compensation for people accessing their content as the United States Constitution allows them to. You have noticed the kinds of laws that they lobby for, right? Since when do they give a damn what the Constitution says?
I'm also open to suggestions on how to do this, although one thing I'm doing is voting the next election. Will you at least do that much? I vote, but there's not much chance of that making a difference. They've got the congressional districts so rigged that it's usually a foregone conclusion as to who is going to win. You can vote for the president, but the only people that get to discuss copyright law with the president's people are the ones that shell out the money to get the attention. They tell congress that the sky is falling and that we need more laws and a longer copyright term, and congress salutes and gets right to work on that.
You are mostly talking about level listing, right? Among other things. I have mods that add hundreds of new creatures, npcs, weapons, armor, etc. Oscuro's Oblivion Overhaul and Martigen's Monster Mod are enormous changes, which not only add all those new things, but they make changes to the AI to make them act more intelligently too. I also use Supreme Magicka, which completely revamps the lame magic system in Oblivion, making many of the useless spells useful again, as well as making most spells more expensive, but adding some extra tweaks to them, such as a chance for a fire spell to knock an opponent down, or an ice spell to freeze someone for a couple of seconds. It also makes enchanting more useful, as it was largely worthless before since you couldn't enchant things to anywhere near the level of the items you could find in the wild. It tones down the chameleon effects as well, as those could make you nearly invincible if you got to 100%. Now, it's closer to sneaking, where you become visible for a few seconds if you take an action.
Then there are the many new quests that can be added, many of them quite large and elaborate, taking anywhere from 2 to 20 or so hours to complete. I use a user-interface mod to make the interface look a lot better and not be so huge and distracting as the default one. There are many visual mods as well that add much better looking weather effects along with better looking vegetation, buildings and other things. The Unique Landscapes project is entirely redoing many parts of the world, making them look simply gorgeous. It's a lot better than having all those areas that look basically the same.
So yeah, the released version of Oblivion was nothing too great, but the modders have turned it into something amazing. I can see myself continuing to play it for at least a couple of years. I doubt that anything will eclipse it before then.
After playing a large portion of the game, I can say the leveling system they have works very well and isn't as nearly as broken as people try to make it out to be. Depends on what you think a game like that should be like. Does it really make sense for a bandit attacking your level 30 character to be such a tough fight? You've been fighting Daedra and other powerful opponents, yet the bandits roaming the roads are now wandering around with high-level armor and equipment and are a match for you still. That's just dumb. Then there's the fact that you can start clearing out oblivion gates when you're like level 2. Again, that's just dumb. Daedra should be destroying such a low-level player. Otherwise, what threat are they? A farmer with a pitchfork could clear a gate!
Can you compare sales on 360/PS3 to PC and tell me that moders made much a difference? I don't have any info about the sales. 360 owners don't exactly have a lot of good RPG games to choose from anyway, and most consolers don't know any better. What I can say is that the game that Bethesda released pretty much sucked after you wandered around it for a few hours. They made some really bad decisions with the gameplay. The game I'm playing now is a VAST improvement over the original. Yeah, I have to load up a dozen mods to get it that way, but I'm playing a completely different game than what 360 owners are playing, and I've only scratched the surface of what's available. As sandbox games go, this one is getting great support and will have MUCH more longevity on the PC than the 360. I don't even know anyone who is still playing it on the 360.
Horse-armor aside, I think Bethesda has done a fine job of supporting a game that is now around two years old. I'd say they've done an adequate job of supporting it. The mod community has done an absolutely amazing job of supporting it though. Without them the game would have dropped off the map within a couple of months at best probably. If it hadn't been for some of the early fixes like getting rid of the horribly UI and fixing the leveling system, a lot of people, myself included, would have gone looking for something else to play.
I believe the Bible supports the concept of man's laws now and God's judgement later. So killing people is ok as long as you pass a law first? Remind me not to vote for christians...
Modern Christians say its actually thou shalt not murder with legally sanction killing being permissible. So yes, even humans can be killed. So they're ok with countries that decide that one group or another is bad and should be killed, pass laws to reflect that belief and then get down to some serious slaughter? Hell, I don't even understand how they justify capital punishment in the US. What happened to letting God be the judge?
I say its time for us citizens to have a 'war on RIAA', and take no prisoners. Start with voting out anyone that in the least supports this. Show them we are displeased with their being purchased and no longer looking out for their constituents. You do realize that aside from the kind of people who read/. nobody is really paying any attention whatsoever to this, right? There aren't enough people who have the foggiest idea about copyright law and the abuses of it to create even a blip on the voting/polling results. Unless and until a very large number of people start paying attention and actually understanding what's going on and opposing it, we're pretty screwed.
Halo 3 finishes the fight. Then what? Why even go on? The story is over. Because they like money. Lots and lots of money. They will surely believe that anything with the Halo name on it will generate an obscene amount of cash for them. That alone will be reason enough to create another Halo game. If it bombs, then maybe they'll move on to something else. But they'll certainly try.
Finally? They have created plenty of non-Halo titles. The Myth series, the Marathon series (best storyline ever, if you're into that kind of thing), Pathways into Darkness... Sure, but they haven't done anything but Halo since they got bought by Microsoft. I think that was the point. It would be nice to see them finally get back to doing other things besides Halo.
I was in China for the last couple of weeks and was actually rather surprised that I was able to access Slashdot there. With all the stories here about the Great Firewall and Chinese censorship, along with ways to circumvent them, I figured Slashdot would be blocked. Now I'm starting to wonder how widespread and effective their censorship efforts actually are. I did see a news report there about the plan to have little cartoon characters popping up on users' screens if they are found to be searching for naughty things. I remembered hearing about that on/. a while back as well.
I don't buy a PC for games. I buy it for my work. I do need/fancy a decent one. I don't factor the basic PC price into cost of gaming. I'll just write off the cost of my PS3 as a DVD/Blu-ray player because I need/fancy a decent one. Gotta have a good upconverter for that new HD set! You need a Blu-Ray player for work? WTF do you do for a living?
If this was a case about releasing to the more affordable platform and therefore hit a larger customer base then I question the choice of releasing the PC version when they did. Would the not hit one of the other consoles first if this was the case? Yeah, installed base isn't the only consideration for them. Epic knows that the PC is their base and always has been. UT is a PC franchise, so it would be a pretty big slap in the face to their primary fanbase if they were to release for a console first. Not to mention they have a lot more experience working with the PC than they do with the consoles, so the consoles seem like they would naturally take a bit longer to get working optimally.
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Nor is MAKING AVAILABLE the same as UPLOADING. I'm not arguing that the judge is correct in equating the two. I am saying that you're wrong when you said that they were being sued for downloading. That's not what happened. They were sued because they were making the files that they downloaded available for others to download. Whether that's technically illegal or not, that is what they are being sued for, not for downloading. This only started because the gp post was talking about "illegal downloads", so I pointed out that they weren't.
Boucher is one of the few guys in Congress that seems to have a brain and doesn't seem to be completely corrupt. He's also not representative of the Democratic party on copyright issues. I just wish he was as vocal as he is now back when the DMCA sailed through Congress with nary a hint of opposition from anyone. So while Boucher may be a good guy on this one, there's still too many democrats getting money from the entertainment industry. We need more like Boucher and less like Hollings.
I sincerely doubt that if Hillary or Obama get into office, that these laws will survive in any part. Why would you doubt that the DMCA would survive? The democrats are even cozier with the entertainment industry than the republicans. Democrats were primarily responsible for the DMCA.
Then there are the many new quests that can be added, many of them quite large and elaborate, taking anywhere from 2 to 20 or so hours to complete. I use a user-interface mod to make the interface look a lot better and not be so huge and distracting as the default one. There are many visual mods as well that add much better looking weather effects along with better looking vegetation, buildings and other things. The Unique Landscapes project is entirely redoing many parts of the world, making them look simply gorgeous. It's a lot better than having all those areas that look basically the same.
So yeah, the released version of Oblivion was nothing too great, but the modders have turned it into something amazing. I can see myself continuing to play it for at least a couple of years. I doubt that anything will eclipse it before then.
I was in China for the last couple of weeks and was actually rather surprised that I was able to access Slashdot there. With all the stories here about the Great Firewall and Chinese censorship, along with ways to circumvent them, I figured Slashdot would be blocked. Now I'm starting to wonder how widespread and effective their censorship efforts actually are. I did see a news report there about the plan to have little cartoon characters popping up on users' screens if they are found to be searching for naughty things. I remembered hearing about that on /. a while back as well.