Wow. Just wow. "I don't agree with you, so you must be trolling," is really rude, even for the internet. Consider not posting any more if you can't handle people who disagree with you.
Furthermore, if all it takes for something to be trustworthy is for a lot of people to endorse it, then I'd believe a hell of a lot of things, many of them conflicting. Christianity, atheism, evolution, creationism, old music is better, new music is better... the list could extend for a very long time. Trustworthiness is based on past results. Nothing more, nothing less. One company can be just as trustworthy as the entire Internet, and the entire Internet can be just as untrustworthy as one company.
you automatically have a less accurate assessment
Bull. You may still have a very accurate assessment, that's why you get someone who you trust to check it over for you. It may happen that you trust the company making the product, it may happen that you trust your brother who works on the Linux kernel in his spare time. The important thing is that you get the information verified by a trustworthy source, not whether or not it comes from the vendor or someone independent.
Actually, you're missing the point. If you truly care about the code working properly, you need to assume, unless evidence to the contrary exists, that each and every one of those open source dudes is a trojan author of doom (or whatever), just like you need to assume the vendor is. If you don't really care, then it doesn't matter whether the people are trustworthy or not.
By whom? Someone trustworthy? Mathematics? You're clutching at straws there, dude.
Uh, prior experience. Isn't that obvious? I don't have to trust someone to use their stuff. For example, I don't trust the people who put cracks up on gamecopyworld.com, necessarily... I just don't care. I use their stuff even though I don't trust them, and they could theoretically build up trust over time.
The point is not that open-source is inherently more trustworthy than closed source, it's that an open-source vendor who claimed that their code could do something it couldn't do would lose credibility.
Closed-source products give the vendor "credibility through obscurity", i.e. something for nothing.
Uh... any vendor who claims their product does something it can't loses credibility. And when they claim they can do something that they can, in fact, do, they gain it. This is all very elementary, and has nothing to do with closed or open source.
Random in the sense of not knowing the person and how much you can trust them. So, to rephrase myself, $unknownInternetDude. He probably knows a thing or two, but then, so do the people who wrote this software, so that isn't really a factor. And I absolutely am not willing to trust $unknownInternetDude without a good reason. For all I know, that person is also $trojanAuthorOfDoom. It's just as unwise to trust him as it is to trust $corporatePrMan.
I trust neither, unless previously proven trustworthy. If either side's explanation is reasonable, then that's an indicator that they might be trustworthy, however, I won't believe either side's explanation without some sort of evidence to back it up.
You're being unwise if you think that a community of unrelated programmers is inherently more trustworthy than the vendor. Neither is inherently trustworthy or untrustworthy, so don't trust either of them without a reason.
And those of us who aren't programmers would merely have to trust $randomInternetDude, rather than the vendor. I fail to see how that's any better. The fact of the matter is, their trustworthiness is toast at this point, and would be so even if it were open.
The same exact way you know if the test is fair if the source is open. The vast majority of us are trusting someone at some point along the line. News flash: 90% of the computer users in the world aren't programmers! They don't look at open source code to make sure they can trust it, they ask someone they consider to be a trusted source, who has earned that status by being reliable in the past. It doesn't matter if that trusted person is someone you know personally, some random dude on the internet, or a vendor.
Contrary to the claims of OSS proponents, the code isn't really more trustworthy if it's open, because not all of us are programmers. If we were (hell, even if most of us were), that'd be true. As things are, though, closed source is only slightly less trustworthy than open source.
I don't know what other players' stance on the issue is, but for my part, I don't care if their effect on the game's economy is positive. The people using these bots are cheating, plain and simple. Cheating in a game shared with others is despicable and should be swatted down wherever it comes up. That's why I oppose this damnable bot. Course, I also oppose Blizzard's legal tactics here, so it's a bit of a catch-22.
WoW is rated T for Teen, and also features alcohol consumption. Why aren't they raising a fuss about that, too? Guess I shouldn't give them ideas, though...
Who profits most from strict alc laws? Breweries. Because you can sell whatever crap piss and call it beer and people will still buy it (trust me, I come from a country with less strict laws concerning alc and your beer simply IS NONE). No need to go for quality or taste, people will buy the crap anyway because, ya know, it's alcohol... the big man stuff that you only get when you're 21.
That is the worst leap of logic I have ever seen. We have crappy beer here because Americans are willing to settle for crap. It has absolutely nothing to do with our alcohol laws. Pay attention sometime: Americans buy crappy clothes, cars, computers, whatever, as long as it's cheap. We even settle for getting bent over by the cell phone companies (unlike the Europeans), and that isn't even cheap! Saying our crappy beer is due to alcohol laws is absolutely false. The logical conclusion would be that we have more underage drinking because of our alcohol laws, not crappy beer.
Yes, because everyone who complains about this is 18 and just jealous cause they can't drink. It can't be that people over 21 find it ridiculous. You're being juvenile. Moreover, your post has nothing to do with the point you're supposedly addressing. You're in another country, you obey their laws. What a shock!! If you're in the US, and under 18, you can't drink, despite your strawman, which is the entire thing people are pissed about.
Agreed. I bought Sins of a Solar Empire precisely because it has no onerous copy protection. The fact that it's a great game doesn't hurt, of course, but the main reason was that the company making it actually treats their customers like valued customers. They understand that the pirates will pirate no matter what, so why make it hard for your paying customers? I applaud this philosophy, and supported it with my dollars. I encourage each and every one of you to do the same, if you enjoy strategy games at all.
I don't mean "reasonable" in the legal sense, I mean in the normal sense of the word. Just based on what I read in TFA, their suit sounds completely unreasonable. That doesn't mean it won't be upheld in court, though.
TFA makes it sound like these women are all upset because some asshat on the internet made a comment about how some women should be raped. Now, granted, that's an asshole thing to say, but if that's all that is going on here, they have no reasonable grounds to be suing. It's someone's right to be an asshole, for better or for worse.
Fuel is NOT expensive, except in relation to what you are USED to paying. Spend a day in Italy, and you would LOVE what gasoline costs back here in America.
This is a fallacy. The fact that fuel is cheap in the US compared to Italy does not imply that fuel is cheap in the US. It's expensive in both places, just not as bad here as in Italy. To put it another way: what you're saying is like talking to a guy with food poisoning, and saying, "You aren't sick, look at that guy over there with AIDS!". Obviously not true.
Inhumane? Not at all. I do, however, take a very, very dim view of human nature, and I dare anyone to provide enough evidence to show that people are generally good-natured. My experience is that human nature is very self-centered, and those who are not self-centered are a) the exception, not the rule, and b) overcoming their natural desires, not in line with them.
Do you mean a hundred of years of slavery is "O.K.?"
Then I want to know what country does not o.k. in your book?
a) Of couse not. But the US also worked to advance freedom by the formation of our system of government, for example. We have always done both good and bad... the good usually outweighing the bad.
b) Several countries don't do OK. Soviet Russia didn't, Nazi Germany didn't, China still doesn't, etc... it's not hard to pick out some examples if you look.
This kind of egoism does only align with the worst in human nature. I question the humanity of a being that is only after his/her own interest. Not to say that self interest has its place. But without considering what it does to others or what would happen if everybody would act the same way is simply inhumane.
Because with this kind of limitless self interest I can justify slavery, destruction of the environment, sub prime mortgage debacles (it was certainly in the self interest of some people), even aggressive wars.
I didn't say it was good or bad, just in line with human nature. That's not a debateable point, imnsho. It's just plain fact.
You need to learn to get over it. The past is dead, it's in the past. The ONLY thing that matters is what the company is doing now, and plans to do in the future.
They had SC2 at BlizzCon 07, why wouldn't they have it at 08? I'm sure they'll have Diablo 3 as well. Blizzard doesn't generally talk about their products until they're good and ready to do so (they're rather like Apple in that respect), and that includes what you may or may not see on the agenda at BlizzCon.
Hopefully Blizzard continues to learn from their convention mistakes...
What, exactly, are you referring to here? I went to BlizzCon last year and it was an awesome time, the best two days of my life. It can't even be that you're complaining about not talking about upcoming games, because there was a fair amount of material for both Starcraft 2 and WoW: WotLK at BlizzCon last year. Nothing on Diablo 3, but then, that hadn't been made public yet.
What more do you expect, that they aren't delivering?
This post is so full of wrong-ness, I can hardly believe it. Where to begin?
Incompatible with liberalism
If by "liberalism" you mean the philosophy of letting people do their own thing (i.e., what libertarianism used to be called), you couldn't be more wrong. Capitalism is the ideal economic system for such a political philosophy.
Incompatible with conservatism
I guess that depends on how you define "conservatism". You may have a point, but don't be so vague.
Incompatible with human rights
The fact that the US has always been capitalistic, and done ok on human rights (not great, but not terrible either), contradicts this.
Incompatible with human nature.
Absolute horseshit. Capitalism aligns PERFECTLY with human nature. Human nature is to improve one's own lot in life as much as possible. Capitalism is to make as much profit for oneself as possible.
Somebody please tell me why we're still fisting Adam Smith's very dry corpse?
Maybe because it's worked out pretty damned well? It's not perfect, but nothing is. Maybe you live in a world where everything goes right all the time, but most of us sure don't.
Slashdot Mirror
Wow. Just wow. "I don't agree with you, so you must be trolling," is really rude, even for the internet. Consider not posting any more if you can't handle people who disagree with you.
Furthermore, if all it takes for something to be trustworthy is for a lot of people to endorse it, then I'd believe a hell of a lot of things, many of them conflicting. Christianity, atheism, evolution, creationism, old music is better, new music is better... the list could extend for a very long time. Trustworthiness is based on past results. Nothing more, nothing less. One company can be just as trustworthy as the entire Internet, and the entire Internet can be just as untrustworthy as one company.
you automatically have a less accurate assessment
Bull. You may still have a very accurate assessment, that's why you get someone who you trust to check it over for you. It may happen that you trust the company making the product, it may happen that you trust your brother who works on the Linux kernel in his spare time. The important thing is that you get the information verified by a trustworthy source, not whether or not it comes from the vendor or someone independent.
Actually, you're missing the point. If you truly care about the code working properly, you need to assume, unless evidence to the contrary exists, that each and every one of those open source dudes is a trojan author of doom (or whatever), just like you need to assume the vendor is. If you don't really care, then it doesn't matter whether the people are trustworthy or not.
By whom? Someone trustworthy? Mathematics? You're clutching at straws there, dude.
Uh, prior experience. Isn't that obvious? I don't have to trust someone to use their stuff. For example, I don't trust the people who put cracks up on gamecopyworld.com, necessarily... I just don't care. I use their stuff even though I don't trust them, and they could theoretically build up trust over time.
The point is not that open-source is inherently more trustworthy than closed source, it's that an open-source vendor who claimed that their code could do something it couldn't do would lose credibility. Closed-source products give the vendor "credibility through obscurity", i.e. something for nothing.
Uh... any vendor who claims their product does something it can't loses credibility. And when they claim they can do something that they can, in fact, do, they gain it. This is all very elementary, and has nothing to do with closed or open source.
Random in the sense of not knowing the person and how much you can trust them. So, to rephrase myself, $unknownInternetDude. He probably knows a thing or two, but then, so do the people who wrote this software, so that isn't really a factor. And I absolutely am not willing to trust $unknownInternetDude without a good reason. For all I know, that person is also $trojanAuthorOfDoom. It's just as unwise to trust him as it is to trust $corporatePrMan.
I trust neither, unless previously proven trustworthy. If either side's explanation is reasonable, then that's an indicator that they might be trustworthy, however, I won't believe either side's explanation without some sort of evidence to back it up.
You're being unwise if you think that a community of unrelated programmers is inherently more trustworthy than the vendor. Neither is inherently trustworthy or untrustworthy, so don't trust either of them without a reason.
And those of us who aren't programmers would merely have to trust $randomInternetDude, rather than the vendor. I fail to see how that's any better. The fact of the matter is, their trustworthiness is toast at this point, and would be so even if it were open.
The same exact way you know if the test is fair if the source is open. The vast majority of us are trusting someone at some point along the line. News flash: 90% of the computer users in the world aren't programmers! They don't look at open source code to make sure they can trust it, they ask someone they consider to be a trusted source, who has earned that status by being reliable in the past. It doesn't matter if that trusted person is someone you know personally, some random dude on the internet, or a vendor.
Contrary to the claims of OSS proponents, the code isn't really more trustworthy if it's open, because not all of us are programmers. If we were (hell, even if most of us were), that'd be true. As things are, though, closed source is only slightly less trustworthy than open source.
I don't know what other players' stance on the issue is, but for my part, I don't care if their effect on the game's economy is positive. The people using these bots are cheating, plain and simple. Cheating in a game shared with others is despicable and should be swatted down wherever it comes up. That's why I oppose this damnable bot. Course, I also oppose Blizzard's legal tactics here, so it's a bit of a catch-22.
WoW is rated T for Teen, and also features alcohol consumption. Why aren't they raising a fuss about that, too? Guess I shouldn't give them ideas, though...
Who profits most from strict alc laws? Breweries. Because you can sell whatever crap piss and call it beer and people will still buy it (trust me, I come from a country with less strict laws concerning alc and your beer simply IS NONE). No need to go for quality or taste, people will buy the crap anyway because, ya know, it's alcohol... the big man stuff that you only get when you're 21.
That is the worst leap of logic I have ever seen. We have crappy beer here because Americans are willing to settle for crap. It has absolutely nothing to do with our alcohol laws. Pay attention sometime: Americans buy crappy clothes, cars, computers, whatever, as long as it's cheap. We even settle for getting bent over by the cell phone companies (unlike the Europeans), and that isn't even cheap! Saying our crappy beer is due to alcohol laws is absolutely false. The logical conclusion would be that we have more underage drinking because of our alcohol laws, not crappy beer.
So all of you 18 year old pricks...
Yes, because everyone who complains about this is 18 and just jealous cause they can't drink. It can't be that people over 21 find it ridiculous. You're being juvenile. Moreover, your post has nothing to do with the point you're supposedly addressing. You're in another country, you obey their laws. What a shock!! If you're in the US, and under 18, you can't drink, despite your strawman, which is the entire thing people are pissed about.
Agreed. I bought Sins of a Solar Empire precisely because it has no onerous copy protection. The fact that it's a great game doesn't hurt, of course, but the main reason was that the company making it actually treats their customers like valued customers. They understand that the pirates will pirate no matter what, so why make it hard for your paying customers? I applaud this philosophy, and supported it with my dollars. I encourage each and every one of you to do the same, if you enjoy strategy games at all.
I don't mean "reasonable" in the legal sense, I mean in the normal sense of the word. Just based on what I read in TFA, their suit sounds completely unreasonable. That doesn't mean it won't be upheld in court, though.
TFA makes it sound like these women are all upset because some asshat on the internet made a comment about how some women should be raped. Now, granted, that's an asshole thing to say, but if that's all that is going on here, they have no reasonable grounds to be suing. It's someone's right to be an asshole, for better or for worse.
If the finance guy are a car dealership is that slow, i dread to imagine where the average person is.
Not being good at math in your head qualifies as "slow"? I had no idea.
Fuel is NOT expensive, except in relation to what you are USED to paying. Spend a day in Italy, and you would LOVE what gasoline costs back here in America.
This is a fallacy. The fact that fuel is cheap in the US compared to Italy does not imply that fuel is cheap in the US. It's expensive in both places, just not as bad here as in Italy. To put it another way: what you're saying is like talking to a guy with food poisoning, and saying, "You aren't sick, look at that guy over there with AIDS!". Obviously not true.
I have a question. In these conjugal visits, you get to have sex with women?
Inhumane? Not at all. I do, however, take a very, very dim view of human nature, and I dare anyone to provide enough evidence to show that people are generally good-natured. My experience is that human nature is very self-centered, and those who are not self-centered are a) the exception, not the rule, and b) overcoming their natural desires, not in line with them.
Do you mean a hundred of years of slavery is "O.K.?" Then I want to know what country does not o.k. in your book?
a) Of couse not. But the US also worked to advance freedom by the formation of our system of government, for example. We have always done both good and bad... the good usually outweighing the bad.
b) Several countries don't do OK. Soviet Russia didn't, Nazi Germany didn't, China still doesn't, etc... it's not hard to pick out some examples if you look.
This kind of egoism does only align with the worst in human nature. I question the humanity of a being that is only after his/her own interest. Not to say that self interest has its place. But without considering what it does to others or what would happen if everybody would act the same way is simply inhumane. Because with this kind of limitless self interest I can justify slavery, destruction of the environment, sub prime mortgage debacles (it was certainly in the self interest of some people), even aggressive wars.
I didn't say it was good or bad, just in line with human nature. That's not a debateable point, imnsho. It's just plain fact.
And then the law will teach him that you don't just shoot people because they're annoying you.
You need to learn to get over it. The past is dead, it's in the past. The ONLY thing that matters is what the company is doing now, and plans to do in the future.
They had SC2 at BlizzCon 07, why wouldn't they have it at 08? I'm sure they'll have Diablo 3 as well. Blizzard doesn't generally talk about their products until they're good and ready to do so (they're rather like Apple in that respect), and that includes what you may or may not see on the agenda at BlizzCon.
It's not odd that they want to charge for their product, it's odd that they charge for the binaries, but not the source. That's the odd thing.
Hopefully Blizzard continues to learn from their convention mistakes...
What, exactly, are you referring to here? I went to BlizzCon last year and it was an awesome time, the best two days of my life. It can't even be that you're complaining about not talking about upcoming games, because there was a fair amount of material for both Starcraft 2 and WoW: WotLK at BlizzCon last year. Nothing on Diablo 3, but then, that hadn't been made public yet.
What more do you expect, that they aren't delivering?
Incompatible with liberalism
If by "liberalism" you mean the philosophy of letting people do their own thing (i.e., what libertarianism used to be called), you couldn't be more wrong. Capitalism is the ideal economic system for such a political philosophy.
Incompatible with conservatism
I guess that depends on how you define "conservatism". You may have a point, but don't be so vague.
Incompatible with human rights
The fact that the US has always been capitalistic, and done ok on human rights (not great, but not terrible either), contradicts this.
Incompatible with human nature.
Absolute horseshit. Capitalism aligns PERFECTLY with human nature. Human nature is to improve one's own lot in life as much as possible. Capitalism is to make as much profit for oneself as possible.
Somebody please tell me why we're still fisting Adam Smith's very dry corpse?
Maybe because it's worked out pretty damned well? It's not perfect, but nothing is. Maybe you live in a world where everything goes right all the time, but most of us sure don't.