You're quoting from the wrong part of the law. See sect. 28-3852(b): "Any person or entity who maintains, handles, or otherwise possesses computerized or other electronic data that includes personal information that the person or entity does not own shall notify the owner or licensee of the information of any breach of the security of the system in the most expedient time possible following discovery." (Italics added)
Of course Best Buy "maintained, handled or otherwise possessed" the data. When they sold the insurance, what would you call it, if not a maintenance contract? And did they not then take actual possession of the machine, when she called on them to honor the contract? With the specific intent of fixing it because it was broken? That sure sounds like "maintenance" or "handling" to me, but she doesn't even need to prove that. She just has to prove that Best Buy possessed the data, that they lost it, and then stonewalled about it.
Furthermore, mere collections of facts as such are not copyrightable. If you make a list of facts, you can get copyright on the form of the list (usually, there's a test that basically boils down to "did you expend actual effort creating this list").
You cannot copyright 2+2=4, you cannot copyright mathematical formulae (but you can copyright the book in which they appear), and most definitely a map showing which area has what taxes is not protectable by copyright.
Most people get sued maybe once in their whole life, but pay taxes every year. I think I know where your trouble with the lawsuits is coming from. You're supposed to pay the taxes, you know...
All you need to make an automatic translation machine are four pieces of technology, three of which by and large already exist. Speech recognition, OCR (for signs, etc), image editing (add subtitles on the fly), and machine translation software. Image editing already exists, and it's not even that hard to do to get something that can autogenerate subtitles -- if all else fails, shrink the picture and add subtitles in the now-empty space at the bottom.
OCR exists. It would need its accuracy significantly improved, but then, most things you are going to want to use it on will be in one several commonly-used typefaces, especially if you're using it on computer text. Speech recognition exists, but by and large isn't good enough yet. Eventually it will be to the point where it either won't need training, or it will be feasible to precompute a database of hundreds of voices and brute force it.
That leaves machine translation. Unlike Star Trek (where the 'universal translators' can deal with even unknown languages, except when required by the plot), you are pretty much never going to get machine translation to deal with unknown languages. But that's OK, you don't really NEED that. Being able to build a new translator database for new languages as needed is enough. The way I figure, by the time machine translation is good enough, the other three prongs will have advanced far enough that you should be able to make a magic box that takes an AV feed in, and spits a new one out at 60 FPS. There you go, and beam me up Scotty, because I want one of those now!
If you look at the actual map (the most interesting part to me), you see that in other parts of the world, the cables do this nice fanning out process -- the undersea cables between New York and Japan, for instance -- but because of the way the continents of Africa and Europe are arranged, they pretty much have to run a whole bunch of cables cables thru a narrow strait. This is a rough time of year for weather, and the aftermath of the first incident just means more traffic is added to that route (as people investigate, try to fix it, etc). So the first accident might have made it more likely for the subsequent ones to happen.
Regarding #1: Why didn't he make such a utility, and include it in his book? It wouldn't be very hard at all, it's just a bunch of registry changes. Then all you have to do is say "To make this change, run my tool, select option XYZZY, and enter your admin password when asked."
You are incorrect. The relevant part of the Fifth Amendment reads No person... shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself. It says nothing about other people, no matter how closely connected to you they are. There are a number of spousal shield laws, but those are laws that the legislature can alter at will. Such things vary state to state and I have NO clue how it works in federal court. But in general, prosecutors avoid this because trying to force someone to testify against a family member, against their will, means they will be very hostile and quite likely to perjure themselves.
They most definitely are not. They put up "The Repository Of Lost Legends", or "TROLL" for short, where they posted a bunch of bogus claims and said it was true. They wanted to drive home the point that you shouldn't replace blindly believing what $LUSER says, with blindly believing what's on snopes. Well, they didn't do a very good job; they had to add a disclaimer after they started getting their own bogus posts as real. People had been spreading them.
Yes, I was younger (a lot younger) then, but that's still no excuse for my becoming a vector for the idea you could substitute a zebra* for Mr. Ed, on black and white TV, and no one would notice. They said it, I said "isn't that odd?" and believed it. It seems strange now that I would believe it just because they said it, but I did, despite the fact it makes no sense. I felt really stupid when I found out.
So I would say the claim that people might assume Zango must be OK, because it's on Snopes, is very possible. After all, Snopes' entire reputation is built upon having unassailable credibility. You would think no one would ever fall for the 419 scam ('Hi, I have $800M I need to launder. But I can't spare $100 for bribes, gimme.') but people fall for it all the time, some of them very smart indeed.
* -- Yes, I know, bad form to link to snopes when the story is 'snopes pushes adware', but it's needed for my point.
Because marriage has legal implications, namely it takes two groups of assets and makes them one group of assets. Then this one group of assets undergoes change -- often very dramatic -- over time as the personal fortunes of those married evolve. Often the asset pool looks very different, and you cannot readily identify who brought what; and how should new wealth be divided?
There used to be no flexibility in these rules at all, the woman basically got screwed. Then when the stigma attached to divorce lessened, people said the rules were not fair, they should be changed. So a bunch of different options on how to handle the split were created. These additional requirements necessitated a coding infrastructure to support them (or at least that is the analogue in the tech world).
So it is a combination of the historical fact that while marriage remains ever popular, divorce used to be almost unheard of (and the law changes slowly); and the fact that divorce is just more complicated in general than marriage.
You also appear to have overlooked that marriage CAN get as complicated as a divorce. Pre-nuptual agreements were created precisely for the situation you describe, and they function to move the complicated negotiations to the marriage contract, from the divorce papers.
It's worse than that. This opinion will almost certainly be overturned on appeal, because I recall another similar case where this logic was used and an appeals court struck it down (but IANAL so I may be mistaken. The opinion isn't available online, but you can get it from the guy's website and if I link to his site without permission I may find myself needing legal representation. Court opinions are not copyrightable, though, so here's me quoting him quoting the opinion:
[Defendant] argues that the Sheppard Letter [the letter in question] is simply detailing a process or instruction [i.e. not copyrightable] that would elicit a response from the Website administrator, specifically the removal of comments about Melaleuca and Mr. VanderSloot from the Website, and therefore is not copyrightable.
Under the DMCA, the copyright holder need only plead a prima facie case of copyright infringement. [Citation] A certificate of registration of a copyright constitutes prima facie evidence of... validity of the copyright... [Plaintiff] has registered the Sheppard Letter with the Copyright Office.... This is prima facie evidence that the Sheppard Letter is copyrighted and satisfies the first prong of demonstrating a prima facie case of copyright infringement. [Defendant] has valid arguments and enforcing this subpoena pre-litigation may have far-reaching consequences, therefore some preliminary examination of the potential claim is necessary. However, the Court will not go into an in-depth analysis of the merits of a copyright infringement claim in determining whether to quash this subpoena. It is sufficient in this instance that Melaleuca has registered the Sheppard Letter with the Copyright Office.
IANAL, but so far as I can tell this translates into the following: The court did not say the letter WAS copyrighted. The guy was using the subpoena provision of the DMCA to get the identity. The judge said that all you have to do to get the identity of a poster is provide prima facie evidence that the thing in dispute's copyrighted. In many contexts, this kind of loose screen is good -- it is intended to be early in the preliminary stages, such as when the prosecutor has to convince a grand jury to indict someone, he doesn't have to prove the whole case, just that it looks like he has one -- but in this case the identity is the whole ballgame.
Then the judge said "Registering something with the copyright office is prima facie evidence of copyright" -- which according to this actually is true. (Near the bottom, best I could find.)
So the net result is you don't need a *valid* copyright claim to find out someone's identity, you just need to get a registration thru the copyright office (within the 5-year window mentioned in my source). The judge then goes on to say he recognizes all of the associated issues (namely, chilling of speech), but says that the Court isn't going to do a more detailed analysis. As many others have said, there are serious issues of copyrightability in legal documents (imagine filing legal papers, claiming copyright, and saying your opponenets can't file counterarguments since that would be an unauthorized derivative work), and even if they are, fair use would almost certainly protect him (the "work" has no market to speak of, and is being directly used to threaten the defendant). But the judge didn't reach the point in the process where such arguments are considered, he was using the standard that says "if the plaintiff has anything that looks reasonable, give him what he asks for".
Just think, you're breathing in the same air that other Apple users, or perhaps even Steve Jobs himself, have drawn in. If you truly want to shun them, either you or them will just have to stop.
No matter the site's target audience, using the word "fuck" (apparently, as cited, three seperate times) in something set up for general consumption is not appropriate. Journalism is the art of effectively conveying information to a very large audience -- the largest; the masses. If the way you present the information is unnecessarily repulsive, or otherwise gratuitious, then yes, you lack journalistic standards in that instance. That's exactly what "journalistic standards" means.
Even though I have no problem with this word, and many people I know do not, that is not the point. Everyone knows, or should know, that many people are highly offended when they heard the word, AND another very large group of people feel it is not appropriate for children to be exposed to this word. Such individuals are quite likely to stop using (or forbid their children from using) the entire site, to varying degrees. That's bad on two counts -- one, you fail to convey your message to your audience (they tune it out), and two, your business is hurt. If the game features language commonly considered graphic, all the review needs to say is "This game frequently makes use of certain four-letter words". If the game used racial slurs frequently in the dialog, would it be appropriate to use those same slurs in the review?
It is a matter of basic politeness. The communication is specifically intended for some people who will be offended; in fact, if you are correct, then he specifically pointed out that he knew that, but used the language anyway, without real warning. This is the same basic reasoning behind noise pollution and other public nuisance laws. There comes a point where it's just impractical to defend one person's right to make huge numbers of people feel uncomfortable, even if you think it's unreasonable for them to be offended; they are, aren't they?
Note: I am not condoning Gamestop's actions; they appear to be guilty as sin, and I have no doubt that this was anything but a pretext.
Sure they can. They can't follow the actual words, but when you the animal to do/not do something, it knows very well what you mean. I forget where I read this, but there are cases where dogs become incredibly anxious and freak out when the owners leave (it's a classic 'problem dog' scenario, apparently) and they have found that the animal will read clues and know the person is getting ready to leave, before the person even consciously knows it.
Say for instance you always keep the treats in a given location. You walk over there, call for the animal, and shake the box -- it comes and gets a treat. Suppose you started doing this, then when the dog comes, show it the treat -- put the treat back in the box, and walk away. How long do you think it will take the dog to figure out you're lying to it? ** And yes, that IS lying. A) You're deliberately communicating something B) you know is not true C) specifically to deceive the dog.
** - I do not advise actually being so cruel as to do this. It does, however, make a good example.
It's not an argument that we're psychotic at all. You may have missed the general thrust of the argument -- which is derived from the "sense of mortality" the OP said. You, I, everyone we've ever met, anyone we've ever cared about -- we are all doomed. But a book can live forever, a constitution or nation can live forever, a play, a movie... All of these things are considered by many to be things bigger than themselves. People put value on these things, and try to protect them, because no one can do anything about their own mortality, but they can make their works outlast them. The US Constitution, George Orwell's novels, Ghandi's nonviolent resistance philosophy -- all of these things are still with us, even though the original creators have since departed.
When J. K. Rowlings dies (as of course she will eventually), she will be dead but Harry Potter will still be attending Hogwarts. Don't you think she would be upset if someone tried to ban the novels and called for all copies to be destroyed? If you went up to her, and called her books worthless tripe and said they wouldn't last and in fifty years no one would want them or read them, that they would be quickly forgotten -- wouldn't that be rude?
So TFA implies the techniques they used are different, that they actually taught the machine how to play the game and gave it a rules-based AI, as opposed to something like genetically evolve a program that executes aribtrary code to map the inputs to the outputs. But I'm not very familiar with these techniques...
> However, the ghosts' routes are deterministic, enabling players to find patterns and predict future
> movements. In Ms. Pac-Man, on the other hand, the ghosts' routes are randomized, so that players can't
> figure out an optimal action sequence in advance.
How sure are they that this AI hasn't simply learned how the random number generator works, so it CAN predict the ghost's movement patterns? Unless the random number generator is reseeded at unpredictable and unmanipulable intervals, then it will be subject to adaptive learning techniques used to figure out the seed.
Almost all these deals were signed years ago, more or less at the same time. It simply took THAT long for Boll to get them made. I have not heard of any new licenses being given to him for game properties in a long time, and I think enough people would find that newsworthy that we'd know.
There were a number of properties with almost-signed deals -- this was before his reputation had cemented -- but the deal was cancelled at the last second; I believe one of the creators of one of the series that almost got signed over said something in an interview to the effect of "it was almost a done deal, until [Bob] looked into who he was... he freaked out, said he'd quit if we did it".
So we should get rid of Rockstar, and undermine the first amendment in order to uphold it? Something tells me that's not a good idea. But you're forgetting that there was controversy before anyone even knew who Rockstar was, and there will continue to be controversy after (inevitably) Rockstar falls. (Of course they will, everyone does eventually; just ask Sonic how he's doing.)
More than that, the controversy WOULD NOT go away if Rockstar went, because Rockstar is in many ways the lightning rod. They took heat over Bully that wasn't even deserved, because certain people have reflexively latched onto them. Because they are pushing the edge, things that were controvertial in the past aren't anymore. I guarantee that the forces arrayed against Rockstar wouldn't simply pack up their soap boxes and go home; they'd take aim at others. The stakes here are pretty serious; look at what happened to comic books back in the 50's. That's what these people want (at least some of them), that's their real agenda, and giving them Rockstar would only make the problem worse.
The contents of most spam are fraudulent. Most are either outright fraud attempts (I am one nigeian prince with $US 10 BILLION DOLLAR) or phishing attempts, and the rest are deceptively advertising counterfeit products like v|/\gr4. Furthermore, concealing the origin has been made specifically illegal, and in any event no spammer would ever be under the delusion their behavior was authorized, just as everyone knows it's not OK to walk into a mall with a bullhorn and scream at the top of your lungs "Enlarge your ****". There are even laws against that kind of thing (noise pollution, disorderly conduct, etc).
The analogy is still correct; if the server fulfils the request and fails to give a "you are not authorized, desist" message, you should be considered authorized. Illegal actions can be considered to be a special case, there's no real reason anyone should expect illegal activity to be authorized.
Slashdot Mirror
Truly, you have a dizzying intellect.
You're quoting from the wrong part of the law. See sect. 28-3852(b): "Any person or entity who maintains, handles, or otherwise possesses computerized or other electronic data that includes personal information that the person or entity does not own shall notify the owner or licensee of the information of any breach of the security of the system in the most expedient time possible following discovery." (Italics added)
Of course Best Buy "maintained, handled or otherwise possessed" the data. When they sold the insurance, what would you call it, if not a maintenance contract? And did they not then take actual possession of the machine, when she called on them to honor the contract? With the specific intent of fixing it because it was broken? That sure sounds like "maintenance" or "handling" to me, but she doesn't even need to prove that. She just has to prove that Best Buy possessed the data, that they lost it, and then stonewalled about it.
Furthermore, mere collections of facts as such are not copyrightable. If you make a list of facts, you can get copyright on the form of the list (usually, there's a test that basically boils down to "did you expend actual effort creating this list").
You cannot copyright 2+2=4, you cannot copyright mathematical formulae (but you can copyright the book in which they appear), and most definitely a map showing which area has what taxes is not protectable by copyright.
Most people get sued maybe once in their whole life, but pay taxes every year. I think I know where your trouble with the lawsuits is coming from. You're supposed to pay the taxes, you know ...
All you need to make an automatic translation machine are four pieces of technology, three of which by and large already exist. Speech recognition, OCR (for signs, etc), image editing (add subtitles on the fly), and machine translation software. Image editing already exists, and it's not even that hard to do to get something that can autogenerate subtitles -- if all else fails, shrink the picture and add subtitles in the now-empty space at the bottom.
OCR exists. It would need its accuracy significantly improved, but then, most things you are going to want to use it on will be in one several commonly-used typefaces, especially if you're using it on computer text. Speech recognition exists, but by and large isn't good enough yet. Eventually it will be to the point where it either won't need training, or it will be feasible to precompute a database of hundreds of voices and brute force it.
That leaves machine translation. Unlike Star Trek (where the 'universal translators' can deal with even unknown languages, except when required by the plot), you are pretty much never going to get machine translation to deal with unknown languages. But that's OK, you don't really NEED that. Being able to build a new translator database for new languages as needed is enough. The way I figure, by the time machine translation is good enough, the other three prongs will have advanced far enough that you should be able to make a magic box that takes an AV feed in, and spits a new one out at 60 FPS. There you go, and beam me up Scotty, because I want one of those now!
If you look at the actual map (the most interesting part to me), you see that in other parts of the world, the cables do this nice fanning out process -- the undersea cables between New York and Japan, for instance -- but because of the way the continents of Africa and Europe are arranged, they pretty much have to run a whole bunch of cables cables thru a narrow strait. This is a rough time of year for weather, and the aftermath of the first incident just means more traffic is added to that route (as people investigate, try to fix it, etc). So the first accident might have made it more likely for the subsequent ones to happen.
Physicist conducts analysis, concludes that thing which already happened is theoretically possible.
Regarding #1: Why didn't he make such a utility, and include it in his book? It wouldn't be very hard at all, it's just a bunch of registry changes. Then all you have to do is say "To make this change, run my tool, select option XYZZY, and enter your admin password when asked."
You are incorrect. The relevant part of the Fifth Amendment reads No person ... shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself. It says nothing about other people, no matter how closely connected to you they are. There are a number of spousal shield laws, but those are laws that the legislature can alter at will. Such things vary state to state and I have NO clue how it works in federal court. But in general, prosecutors avoid this because trying to force someone to testify against a family member, against their will, means they will be very hostile and quite likely to perjure themselves.
They most definitely are not. They put up "The Repository Of Lost Legends", or "TROLL" for short, where they posted a bunch of bogus claims and said it was true. They wanted to drive home the point that you shouldn't replace blindly believing what $LUSER says, with blindly believing what's on snopes. Well, they didn't do a very good job; they had to add a disclaimer after they started getting their own bogus posts as real. People had been spreading them.
Yes, I was younger (a lot younger) then, but that's still no excuse for my becoming a vector for the idea you could substitute a zebra* for Mr. Ed, on black and white TV, and no one would notice. They said it, I said "isn't that odd?" and believed it. It seems strange now that I would believe it just because they said it, but I did, despite the fact it makes no sense. I felt really stupid when I found out.
So I would say the claim that people might assume Zango must be OK, because it's on Snopes, is very possible. After all, Snopes' entire reputation is built upon having unassailable credibility. You would think no one would ever fall for the 419 scam ('Hi, I have $800M I need to launder. But I can't spare $100 for bribes, gimme.') but people fall for it all the time, some of them very smart indeed.
* -- Yes, I know, bad form to link to snopes when the story is 'snopes pushes adware', but it's needed for my point.
Because marriage has legal implications, namely it takes two groups of assets and makes them one group of assets. Then this one group of assets undergoes change -- often very dramatic -- over time as the personal fortunes of those married evolve. Often the asset pool looks very different, and you cannot readily identify who brought what; and how should new wealth be divided?
There used to be no flexibility in these rules at all, the woman basically got screwed. Then when the stigma attached to divorce lessened, people said the rules were not fair, they should be changed. So a bunch of different options on how to handle the split were created. These additional requirements necessitated a coding infrastructure to support them (or at least that is the analogue in the tech world).
So it is a combination of the historical fact that while marriage remains ever popular, divorce used to be almost unheard of (and the law changes slowly); and the fact that divorce is just more complicated in general than marriage.
You also appear to have overlooked that marriage CAN get as complicated as a divorce. Pre-nuptual agreements were created precisely for the situation you describe, and they function to move the complicated negotiations to the marriage contract, from the divorce papers.
IANAL, but so far as I can tell this translates into the following: The court did not say the letter WAS copyrighted. The guy was using the subpoena provision of the DMCA to get the identity. The judge said that all you have to do to get the identity of a poster is provide prima facie evidence that the thing in dispute's copyrighted. In many contexts, this kind of loose screen is good -- it is intended to be early in the preliminary stages, such as when the prosecutor has to convince a grand jury to indict someone, he doesn't have to prove the whole case, just that it looks like he has one -- but in this case the identity is the whole ballgame.
Then the judge said "Registering something with the copyright office is prima facie evidence of copyright" -- which according to this actually is true. (Near the bottom, best I could find.)
So the net result is you don't need a *valid* copyright claim to find out someone's identity, you just need to get a registration thru the copyright office (within the 5-year window mentioned in my source). The judge then goes on to say he recognizes all of the associated issues (namely, chilling of speech), but says that the Court isn't going to do a more detailed analysis. As many others have said, there are serious issues of copyrightability in legal documents (imagine filing legal papers, claiming copyright, and saying your opponenets can't file counterarguments since that would be an unauthorized derivative work), and even if they are, fair use would almost certainly protect him (the "work" has no market to speak of, and is being directly used to threaten the defendant). But the judge didn't reach the point in the process where such arguments are considered, he was using the standard that says "if the plaintiff has anything that looks reasonable, give him what he asks for".
Does it run linux? Because if it doesn't, we probably need to find someone who does.
You're going to have an awfully hard time uploading data through an antenna. Internet access is bidirectional.
Just think, you're breathing in the same air that other Apple users, or perhaps even Steve Jobs himself, have drawn in. If you truly want to shun them, either you or them will just have to stop.
In order to implement the standard, it was necessary to extend it.
No matter the site's target audience, using the word "fuck" (apparently, as cited, three seperate times) in something set up for general consumption is not appropriate. Journalism is the art of effectively conveying information to a very large audience -- the largest; the masses. If the way you present the information is unnecessarily repulsive, or otherwise gratuitious, then yes, you lack journalistic standards in that instance. That's exactly what "journalistic standards" means.
Even though I have no problem with this word, and many people I know do not, that is not the point. Everyone knows, or should know, that many people are highly offended when they heard the word, AND another very large group of people feel it is not appropriate for children to be exposed to this word. Such individuals are quite likely to stop using (or forbid their children from using) the entire site, to varying degrees. That's bad on two counts -- one, you fail to convey your message to your audience (they tune it out), and two, your business is hurt. If the game features language commonly considered graphic, all the review needs to say is "This game frequently makes use of certain four-letter words". If the game used racial slurs frequently in the dialog, would it be appropriate to use those same slurs in the review?
It is a matter of basic politeness. The communication is specifically intended for some people who will be offended; in fact, if you are correct, then he specifically pointed out that he knew that, but used the language anyway, without real warning. This is the same basic reasoning behind noise pollution and other public nuisance laws. There comes a point where it's just impractical to defend one person's right to make huge numbers of people feel uncomfortable, even if you think it's unreasonable for them to be offended; they are, aren't they?
Note: I am not condoning Gamestop's actions; they appear to be guilty as sin, and I have no doubt that this was anything but a pretext.
Sure they can. They can't follow the actual words, but when you the animal to do/not do something, it knows very well what you mean. I forget where I read this, but there are cases where dogs become incredibly anxious and freak out when the owners leave (it's a classic 'problem dog' scenario, apparently) and they have found that the animal will read clues and know the person is getting ready to leave, before the person even consciously knows it.
Say for instance you always keep the treats in a given location. You walk over there, call for the animal, and shake the box -- it comes and gets a treat. Suppose you started doing this, then when the dog comes, show it the treat -- put the treat back in the box, and walk away. How long do you think it will take the dog to figure out you're lying to it? ** And yes, that IS lying. A) You're deliberately communicating something B) you know is not true C) specifically to deceive the dog.
** - I do not advise actually being so cruel as to do this. It does, however, make a good example.
It's not an argument that we're psychotic at all. You may have missed the general thrust of the argument -- which is derived from the "sense of mortality" the OP said. You, I, everyone we've ever met, anyone we've ever cared about -- we are all doomed. But a book can live forever, a constitution or nation can live forever, a play, a movie ... All of these things are considered by many to be things bigger than themselves. People put value on these things, and try to protect them, because no one can do anything about their own mortality, but they can make their works outlast them. The US Constitution, George Orwell's novels, Ghandi's nonviolent resistance philosophy -- all of these things are still with us, even though the original creators have since departed.
When J. K. Rowlings dies (as of course she will eventually), she will be dead but Harry Potter will still be attending Hogwarts. Don't you think she would be upset if someone tried to ban the novels and called for all copies to be destroyed? If you went up to her, and called her books worthless tripe and said they wouldn't last and in fifty years no one would want them or read them, that they would be quickly forgotten -- wouldn't that be rude?
So TFA implies the techniques they used are different, that they actually taught the machine how to play the game and gave it a rules-based AI, as opposed to something like genetically evolve a program that executes aribtrary code to map the inputs to the outputs. But I'm not very familiar with these techniques ...
> However, the ghosts' routes are deterministic, enabling players to find patterns and predict future
> movements. In Ms. Pac-Man, on the other hand, the ghosts' routes are randomized, so that players can't
> figure out an optimal action sequence in advance.
How sure are they that this AI hasn't simply learned how the random number generator works, so it CAN predict the ghost's movement patterns? Unless the random number generator is reseeded at unpredictable and unmanipulable intervals, then it will be subject to adaptive learning techniques used to figure out the seed.
Almost all these deals were signed years ago, more or less at the same time. It simply took THAT long for Boll to get them made. I have not heard of any new licenses being given to him for game properties in a long time, and I think enough people would find that newsworthy that we'd know.
... he freaked out, said he'd quit if we did it".
There were a number of properties with almost-signed deals -- this was before his reputation had cemented -- but the deal was cancelled at the last second; I believe one of the creators of one of the series that almost got signed over said something in an interview to the effect of "it was almost a done deal, until [Bob] looked into who he was
Better move fast, you'll need to strike while the metal is hot.
So we should get rid of Rockstar, and undermine the first amendment in order to uphold it? Something tells me that's not a good idea. But you're forgetting that there was controversy before anyone even knew who Rockstar was, and there will continue to be controversy after (inevitably) Rockstar falls. (Of course they will, everyone does eventually; just ask Sonic how he's doing.)
More than that, the controversy WOULD NOT go away if Rockstar went, because Rockstar is in many ways the lightning rod. They took heat over Bully that wasn't even deserved, because certain people have reflexively latched onto them. Because they are pushing the edge, things that were controvertial in the past aren't anymore. I guarantee that the forces arrayed against Rockstar wouldn't simply pack up their soap boxes and go home; they'd take aim at others. The stakes here are pretty serious; look at what happened to comic books back in the 50's. That's what these people want (at least some of them), that's their real agenda, and giving them Rockstar would only make the problem worse.
The contents of most spam are fraudulent. Most are either outright fraud attempts (I am one nigeian prince with $US 10 BILLION DOLLAR) or phishing attempts, and the rest are deceptively advertising counterfeit products like v|/\gr4. Furthermore, concealing the origin has been made specifically illegal, and in any event no spammer would ever be under the delusion their behavior was authorized, just as everyone knows it's not OK to walk into a mall with a bullhorn and scream at the top of your lungs "Enlarge your ****". There are even laws against that kind of thing (noise pollution, disorderly conduct, etc).
The analogy is still correct; if the server fulfils the request and fails to give a "you are not authorized, desist" message, you should be considered authorized. Illegal actions can be considered to be a special case, there's no real reason anyone should expect illegal activity to be authorized.