In the case of Adobe, I fully agree that they are gouging. CS5 upgrade in the UK is GBP175 ish. In the US, it's USD180. But I'm not allowed to buy it from the US either boxed or digital.
But can you afford to fly back LA for your first warranty claim? Your second ?
That's why instead, Dell have to put a support team on the ground in Australia for a far small customer base, pay local taxes, pay accountants to be familiar with local requirements and make filings, pay for space, communications infrastructure, warehousing, etc.
And they do all of that to a fairly remote, fairly small consumer base.
I'd love to see altered carbon but I doubt we will because of actor egos. How do you convince the cast that while the character is the same (lead protagonist), you need multiple actors to play it, so no single actor gets the screen throughout ?
It's the initial cost that I'm talking about. I won't buy games that are multiplayer only or predominantly multiplayer with a silly little sub-8 hour single player campaign.
I won't waste my money on games where, to enjoy the game the way it was meant to be played, I have to risk verbal abuse.
Because anyone with a few hours to kill can play against a computer and have some fun. When you have a family and a job, you can't put the hours in and you get the crap beaten out of you by human opponents. Then the abuse comes flooding in either from your own team for dragging them down or from the opponents for not being as good as the kid who plays one or two games for hours at a time and has mastered them.
Sensible people don't like paying large amounts of money to be verbally abused.
I got bored out of my mind in this game. Ride here, shoot 5 things. Ride there, capture a rustler. Rider there, harvest 5 herbs. Over. And Over. And Over. Again!
On the other hand, last year I finished Arkham Asylum, all 3 of the Assassin's Creed games, Dragon Age Origins, and Fallout 3.
Red Dead might have been fun for others and given them the game play that they wanted. Those same people may have been bored by the games I _did_ finish. Different strokes for different folks.
I have to assume you're British then. What was used in the student protests was hardly force. There were a few pushes and shoves. If you want to see force, look at somewhere like South Africa, Argentina or even to a very small degree, Greece.
Riot officers here do this as volunteers and more than a few have handed their L2 tickets back in because they do not get the support of their management or the public for the job they do.
You sound a little deluded or willfully uninformed when you say First, I believe all this kinds of riots are just group/herd behaviour ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herd_behaviour ) and any blackberry "coordination" was probably some innocent people inviting others to join the protest.
Here's a message that was sent:
"Everyone from all sides of London meet up at the heart of London (central) OXFORD CIRCUS!!, Bare SHOPS are gonna get smashed up so come get some (free stuff!!!) fuck the feds we will send them back with OUR riot! >:O Dead the ends and colour war for now so if you see a brother... SALUT! if you see a fed... SHOOT!"
That's not an invitation to peaceful protest. That's incitement to rob, loot and kill. There is nothing innocent about that.
Baton and shield charges hurt people, and whenever the police here hurt anyone, deserved or not, they get canned for it in the press and by the public.
The UK have got the police force they deserve. They've got the police force that The Guardian and other softies have been agitating for years for. And now London is burning as a result.
How on earth do supposedly educated people on a site that bangs on and on about intellectual property rights still not know this ?
You do NOT have to actively enforce copyright. You can let 1 guy use it, and chase down another guy for the same thing, no problems.
The same goes for patents.
The only thing that you have to actively enforce and protect is a trademark. If you fail to do so, the mark can become genericised and you can lose your exclusive right to it. Even in this case, you can continue to use it, but you can not take any enforcement action against someone else for using it.
You need to find a new guy to get legal advice from. INAL is clearly lying to you.
See my rant above about the Leatherman Supertool. I've always carried one of these in preference over swiss army knives because all of the blades lock open.
I got sick and tired of screwdrivers closing on my fingers when using them on the swiss army knife, so I moved to the supertool. But because that has two blades that lock open, it's illegal.
It's safer than the swiss army knife. It's more robust for most purposes when camping or hunting. But it's illegal unless you can show a good reason for having it with you.
The Leatherman Supertool can get you sent to jail here. They don't tell you that when you buy it at Blacks. There is no pamphlet telling you that you need to have a good reason to carry it that a policeman will believe. But you can still go to jail for having it with you.
Yet a swiss army knife, that is arguably more dangerous to the user is legal.
Slashdot Mirror
We can't get this here in the UK until Friday, by which time most of it has already been spoiled.
I've got it on order from Amazon, but I'm tempted to pirate it tonight so that no more gets spoiled for me :(
In the case of Adobe, I fully agree that they are gouging. CS5 upgrade in the UK is GBP175 ish. In the US, it's USD180. But I'm not allowed to buy it from the US either boxed or digital.
But can you afford to fly back LA for your first warranty claim? Your second ?
That's why instead, Dell have to put a support team on the ground in Australia for a far small customer base, pay local taxes, pay accountants to be familiar with local requirements and make filings, pay for space, communications infrastructure, warehousing, etc.
And they do all of that to a fairly remote, fairly small consumer base.
That's where a lot of costs come from.
Sure ... because it costs _nothing_ to have staff in your region, familiarity of the accounting laws and requirements of your region, tax returns, etc.
We suffer from a higher price in the UK. But once you add the taxes to the US prices, they look a lot more reasonable.
I'd love to see altered carbon but I doubt we will because of actor egos. How do you convince the cast that while the character is the same (lead protagonist), you need multiple actors to play it, so no single actor gets the screen throughout ?
It's the initial cost that I'm talking about. I won't buy games that are multiplayer only or predominantly multiplayer with a silly little sub-8 hour single player campaign.
I won't waste my money on games where, to enjoy the game the way it was meant to be played, I have to risk verbal abuse.
Because anyone with a few hours to kill can play against a computer and have some fun. When you have a family and a job, you can't put the hours in and you get the crap beaten out of you by human opponents. Then the abuse comes flooding in either from your own team for dragging them down or from the opponents for not being as good as the kid who plays one or two games for hours at a time and has mastered them.
Sensible people don't like paying large amounts of money to be verbally abused.
Yep. I loved DA:Origins, but just couldn't finish II.
I got bored out of my mind in this game. Ride here, shoot 5 things. Ride there, capture a rustler. Rider there, harvest 5 herbs. Over. And Over. And Over. Again!
On the other hand, last year I finished Arkham Asylum, all 3 of the Assassin's Creed games, Dragon Age Origins, and Fallout 3.
Red Dead might have been fun for others and given them the game play that they wanted. Those same people may have been bored by the games I _did_ finish. Different strokes for different folks.
I've had two of these. The first one was stolen with all of my gear in it.
After extensive research, I ended up just buying another one.
This weekend, I carried it around Edinburgh for hours on end with no discomfort.
I have to assume you're British then. What was used in the student protests was hardly force. There were a few pushes and shoves. If you want to see force, look at somewhere like South Africa, Argentina or even to a very small degree, Greece.
Riot officers here do this as volunteers and more than a few have handed their L2 tickets back in because they do not get the support of their management or the public for the job they do.
You sound a little deluded or willfully uninformed when you say
First, I believe all this kinds of riots are just group/herd behaviour ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herd_behaviour ) and any blackberry "coordination" was probably some innocent people inviting others to join the protest.
Here's a message that was sent:
"Everyone from all sides of London meet up at the heart of London (central) OXFORD CIRCUS!!, Bare SHOPS are gonna get smashed up so come get some (free stuff!!!) fuck the feds we will send them back with OUR riot! >:O Dead the ends and colour war for now so if you see a brother... SALUT! if you see a fed... SHOOT!"
That's not an invitation to peaceful protest. That's incitement to rob, loot and kill. There is nothing innocent about that.
It's not incompetence. It's fear.
Baton and shield charges hurt people, and whenever the police here hurt anyone, deserved or not, they get canned for it in the press and by the public.
The UK have got the police force they deserve. They've got the police force that The Guardian and other softies have been agitating for years for. And now London is burning as a result.
I've got just over 1TB of raw video and images now. I can't find a well priced service to back this all up to :(
When the media go MONA (Men of No Appearance) in their reports you can always assume that the people in question are generally not caucasian.
And the land of the FREE^ and the home of the BRAVE*.
^Some terms and conditions may apply. Offer not valid in all areas. Tyrants excepted.
*Brave - noun - North American Warrior.
Time for a new anthem methinks.
And when one of your friends of family get a worm that steals their address book ? What's your plan at that point ?
How on earth do supposedly educated people on a site that bangs on and on about intellectual property rights still not know this ?
You do NOT have to actively enforce copyright. You can let 1 guy use it, and chase down another guy for the same thing, no problems.
The same goes for patents.
The only thing that you have to actively enforce and protect is a trademark. If you fail to do so, the mark can become genericised and you can lose your exclusive right to it. Even in this case, you can continue to use it, but you can not take any enforcement action against someone else for using it.
You need to find a new guy to get legal advice from. INAL is clearly lying to you.
They may have not got there first, but they can still go there while America can't. So they lost the sprint, but they won the endurance race.
What makes you think that ? iLife was malware laden on the p2p sites.
Many people in the UK are on a DSL internet connection with a 10GB cap.
Stalking Horse
See my rant above about the Leatherman Supertool. I've always carried one of these in preference over swiss army knives because all of the blades lock open.
I got sick and tired of screwdrivers closing on my fingers when using them on the swiss army knife, so I moved to the supertool. But because that has two blades that lock open, it's illegal.
It's safer than the swiss army knife. It's more robust for most purposes when camping or hunting. But it's illegal unless you can show a good reason for having it with you.
The Leatherman Supertool can get you sent to jail here. They don't tell you that when you buy it at Blacks. There is no pamphlet telling you that you need to have a good reason to carry it that a policeman will believe. But you can still go to jail for having it with you.
Yet a swiss army knife, that is arguably more dangerous to the user is legal.
Fucking bullshit.
In fairness to the USPTO (and I'm hardly ever fair to them) they never would have granted anything so obvious.
What they did grant a patent for was for _sideways_ swinging on a swing!