Before the next gen started, game sales in Japan were on a fairly steady -- but slow -- decline. Interviews on the topic would frequently contain prophecies of doom, saying if nothing changed, gaming as we know it might just end. How is this turned around? Well, if your reliable base isn't so reliable anymore, then you find new customers. This is what Nintendo has spent a couple years figuring out how to do. The attach rate being important is a symptom of the take-a-loss-to-move-consoles strategy, yes, but also a consequence of the idea that there's only so many gamers out there. Nintendo is making the pie bigger, not trying to squeeze more blood from the stone.
Let alone non-trivial-to-analyze transformations, such as password-protected zip files -- including the password as part of a text file in the torrent, or making it generally known some other way. Last I checked, zip files were using pretty good encryption -- let alone the fact they completely reencode the whole file. Antivirus software still can't scan inside encrypted zip files, can it? If AV software can't do this, certainly this filter is going to be thwarted.
There's a LOT of apocalpytic literature out there that would make great games. Norse mythology, for one -- Valkyrie Profile took quite a bit, but didn't have a whole lot of story and what WAS there was largely made up by TriAce. There's all kinds of cool stuff they could have used -- like Odin hanging himself, then coming back three days later with knowledge usually known only to those dead. And forget what Left Behind did with it -- just take the Book of Revelations absolutely literally and go for broke.
If the writers were strong enough, even Roanoke would be a good springboard for a game. A colony that's doing fine... Five years later, a resupply mission from the motherland arrives, to find the whole place simply deserted. No bodies, no blood, no signs of struggle, just -- nothing.
No. This is a copyright infringement suit, not a trademark case. Trademark law does work the way you describe -- if you do not defend a trademark, you can lose all protection to it. Trademarks are supposed to identify that the trademarked item comes from a particular source; if world+dog can use it without interference, this vanishes and so does the protection. There are number of high-profile cases of this happening to existing trademarks (see below), so most big corporations with very valuable brand names are quite paranoid about allowing them to be diluted.
No comparable mechanism exists for copyright. Copyright holders are free to prosecute whoever they want, and ignore other infringers. There are a couple of defenses (if you tell someone they can do something, for instance, you can't sue them anymore) but generally, a copyright holder is perfectly free to leave websites alone and go after those same people for selling deadtree versions of the exact same content. It so happens in this case they have a weak case, but for other reasons (fair use reasons).
Were it done any other way, one of the consequences would be that all fanfiction would have to be cracked down on (otherwise the owners would lose all copyrights). While a lot of people like to make cracks about how bad much fanfiction is, I don't think many would argue it ought to be cracked down on indiscriminately.
Sadly, this is actually the point of most magazines. I forget where I saw this article (it was the one where an insider explains how the PR industry works), but basically magazines make more off their advertisers than they do from direct sales. This is true for pretty much everything except a small handful -- academic journals, mostly, I expect. The exact phrasing, I believe, was to the effect of "Magazines would just give subscriptions away, but the advertisers won't let them -- they think if they give it away, people won't pay any attention to it."
That's why subscriptions are SO much cheaper. Some of it is that you're basically signing a (usually) one-year contract agreeing to buy 12 issues in advance. But a subscriber is not anonymous. They don't have to get approximate numbers on sales. They know exactly how many subscribers they have -- and their names, addresses, and (through various companies that specialize in collimating this kind of data) can usually figure out exactly who you are based on how you pay. Then they get all kinds of demographic info that's quite valuable to advertisers. When was the last time you saw a life insurance ad in any gaming mag? As the demographics shift, eventually that market will be looking to get life insurance (same as everybody else). And the subscriber info is the easiest way for them to track this.
"Beyesian" filtering will be used to filter out those less intelligent than the article authors? Positively iron-clad. This article is a brillant idea, and I'm glad I thought of it.
Shadowrun had a few problems, one of the biggest of which is "license desecration". They took the Shadowrun name, and went and made something totally unlike Shadowrun. The problem here has two parts -- one, the Shadowrun name means little or nothing to people who aren't fans; the Shadowrun property is fairly niche. It isn't like "Dungeons and Dragons" or "Final Fantasy" where you slap a name on something for some cheap extra sales. And two, the people who ARE fans were totally incensed by their decision. They took a very involved RPG setting with a dark, intricate setting and turned it into a storyless shooter. (So little story, in fact, it has no single-player.) I mean, fans were outraged to the point that the developers of the pen-n-paper game made statements disavowing the game and saying "We offered to help them make it something cool, they weren't at all interested."
Oh, I don't worry about that so much anymore. I used to stay up all night worrying about the evil robots, with their beady little eyes and their disturbing resemblence to the Governator. Then I heard about Old Glory Insurance. Now I know that when Skynet sends the robots after me, I'll be covered. And when they grab you with those metal claws, you can't break free... because they're made of metal, and robots are strong.
Old Glory Insurance. For when the metal ones decide to come for you - and they will.
If it's a game I'm done with, then the save doesn't matter. If it is a game I'm either actively playing, or planning on finishing in the near future, the save file is worth (hourly pay rate) times the maximum of (time spent playing to get save || time to be spent replaying to get save back). Some games have rares that are almost impossible to get. The US version of FF4, for instance, had an item only dropped by an enemy 1/64 battles -- and that enemy only appeared 1/64 fights in one particular place. If I'd got lucky and got that in an hour, it might take a hundred to get it back.
Somehow I doubt Archaeology magazine felt the need to attach a disclaimer to this article, trusting most would notice it was a joke. Also, the reason this didn't come out around Halloween is a deliberate delay, probably because the magazine wanted the dead tree (undead tree?) issues to get to the subscribers before they put it online. Why would anyone subscribe if the articles were online before your copy arrived in the mail?
Then again, supposedly the year the BBC did the "spaghetti tree" story for April Fools' they were flooded with calls. I guess Archaeology Mag. just thought the readers would use their braaaaaaaains.
Because if Sony folds then it becomes "Microsoft versus Nintendo". Considering Microsoft's past history, a lot of people aren't too comfortable with that thought.
There's almost no way this particular compound was approved for use in toddler's toys. If they're young enough, the first rule is that if they can get hold of it, they'll try to eat it. Or some will. Enough you have to plan for it. As such toys for really young kids are pretty much required to be nontoxic.
This doesn't address toxicity specifically, but I can't imagine anything that puts kids in comas would fly. Let alone the fact that if it's a precursor to GHB, it's probably illegal just for that alone, as a controlled substance.
Why the article focuses only on video games, I don't know. But it called itself "innovations in game design", and didn't have anything at all to say -- good, bad, whatever -- about anything non-computerized. Consider the evolution of the game of chess, for instance: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origins_of_chess
The queen and the bishop both evolved from previously weak pieces. Why? What did the rule changes bring? Surely there is something to be learned here. Why is the Queen a rook and a bishop? Why not a rook and a knight? Why is there no uberqueen (can move like queen or knight)? All of these speak to a certain issue of balance of power -- offhand, I'd say that the rules changes were intended to speed the game up, without making first-mover advantage too powerful. What does that say about game design? Nothing that the authors mention.
Or how about the introduction of playing cards. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Playing_cards Why four suits? The Indian decks referenced can have many more. Why four suits, and why the specific ones we have? Standardization. Consider the vast variety of games played with a deck of cards; how many use nonstandard decks? Very few. But there are far more interesting things about card games -- as evidenced by the fact that poker bots suck.
Video games have been around for a few decades. Chess has been around for the better part of a millenium. Even though I may not be able to answer all the questions I just raised, I knew that they were there. To barely even mention games that are not electronic, in an article on 50 landmark game design innovations seems to me to be the height of folly, or perhaps hubris. (Anyone care to apply game theory to my managing the odds of getting modded troll for that last remark?;)
And we still don't have machine translation yet. Robots can barely walk! Somehow the human mind is able to figure that out inside of 2 years, but it's mind-bogglingly difficult to program. In any field, there are easy problems. And there are hard problems. Some things simply cannot be done, at any price, no matter how easy they might seem or how long the problem has been around. One of the VERY FIRST things they wanted from computers was machine translation. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Machine_translation#History -- In 1950 they were saying it'd be solved in 3-5 years. In 1950! Computers had barely been invented, and they were saying "just 3-5 years". They've been saying it ever since. What have we got? "Bite the wax tadpole" "You are on the way to destruction" and other mangled text little better than gibberish.
Just because Crohn's disease hasn't been cured, doesn't mean it's due to lack of effort. It may, or it may not. You know how much is poured into cancer and AIDS research every year? How many effective treatments for those do we have? And those have clear causes.
Developing new treatments is hard. Biotech is one of the riskiest fields to invest in, because there are so many hurdles to pass before an advance can be verified; fail at any stage, all your investment is largely worthless. Yes, it is a common criticism that drug companies have chosen to focus on things that make fabulous sums of money -- like the products you mentioned. And that is a problem, but it doesn't mean this particular instance (Crohn's) is a valid example.
Here's an interesting question. Supposing the plane actually did crash, won't these 'forms' be destroyed in a fiery inferno of burning death? Even if the forms do somehow survive unharmed, how are they going to find them? Is the commander going to make little paper airplanes and fly them out? Is he going to fax them over? Cause, you know, all planes carry fax machines for use in emergencies, in case anyone has any legal papers they need signed.
Say, this give me an idea. Excuse me, I've got to go find the site of a plane crash, so I can plant this document that says everyone on the plane names me their heir.
There's two groups of people here. One -- people who actually did download music illegally (yes, illegally, it's copyright infringement), and two -- people who are mistakenly accused. When the RIAA makes a mistake (which happens all too often), they don't admit it even when called on it -- they simply continue to demand that the person pay.
The OP's point: This particular individual appears to be a member of group one, but is trying to get in front of groups one and two (the quote about 'this judgement will encourage people, innocent or otherwise, to settle').
Personally, I think the penalties are *outrageous*. More, they probably constitute cruel and unusual punishment. Several hundred thousand dollars for $150 worth of merchandise? $25K is the cost of a car, and the upper limit of the statutory damages could easily pay off several homes. The law is clearly aimed at people running a business, but the it's being applied to clearly aren't. This is true regardless which group she actually is in. She should be on the hook for a tenth of that or less.
As for blaming her for losing -- she had a weak case (the metadata matched known pirate distros, the songs matched her musical taste, the userID is the same as one she's used for years), she got weak legal representation (there are several legal avenues being pursued in other cases that weren't even brought up in this one, and if you don't bring it up you waive it), and she decided to fight. Her attorney should have advised her to take their settlement offer. (Perhaps the first one did, so she found another. We don't know.) Instead, she went to trial. She would have been much better off taking their settlement offer, if she's guilty then she should have known they had a mountain of evidence. Does that mean I think the RIAA should have done what they did? No. But she had multiple opportunities to avoid this, and chose not to use them. So it is fair to say she takes some of the blame. After all, it is quite likely she actually did misappropriate their copyrighted material.
> People who benefit from the current model will need to embrace a new revenue model, or wait for others to disrupt.
It's far more insidious than that. This is EA, the company known for (among other things) taking things that used to be standard features -- stripping them out -- then trying to sell them to you via micropayments. That is a "new revenue model". Sell the game cheap. Only it isn't the whole game. Most of the cool parts aren't there. Then you get nickeled and dimed to death buying the game that was supposed to be the game you just bought. Getting in is so easy, then you need more... more... more... That would be a great new revenue model -- for EA. It's only the same model used by drug dealers:)
Or how about charging people annual fees? Instead of 'buying' the game, you're only ever renting it. Want to put 150 hours on Disgaea 7? Well, gee, that gets kind of expensive. You should have played the 30 free hours that come with it, then bought the next one. Duh!
I for one do NOT welcome our new revenue model overlords. Call me crazy, but I'll stick with the devil I know. Here is my money -- now get out of my face and let me play *my* game. I have no interest in playing a "lower" price to be allowed to rent from you. You don't get to tell me how many times I can install the game, you don't get to tell me the game's not allowed to run because I haven't paid my subscription. And take those in-game ads and shove em where the sun don't shine (anyplace in your corporate headquarters should do fine, I suspect, what with all the blood-sucking vampires working out of the facility). *
* -- Note the presence of a teensy bit of exaggeration. In-game ads make sense in some instances -- but if I ever have to eat a Whopper to heal in Final Fantasy, I'll have to break out the can o' whup-ass.
Slashdot Mirror
All the other cockroaches are doing it.
Before the next gen started, game sales in Japan were on a fairly steady -- but slow -- decline. Interviews on the topic would frequently contain prophecies of doom, saying if nothing changed, gaming as we know it might just end. How is this turned around? Well, if your reliable base isn't so reliable anymore, then you find new customers. This is what Nintendo has spent a couple years figuring out how to do. The attach rate being important is a symptom of the take-a-loss-to-move-consoles strategy, yes, but also a consequence of the idea that there's only so many gamers out there. Nintendo is making the pie bigger, not trying to squeeze more blood from the stone.
Let alone non-trivial-to-analyze transformations, such as password-protected zip files -- including the password as part of a text file in the torrent, or making it generally known some other way. Last I checked, zip files were using pretty good encryption -- let alone the fact they completely reencode the whole file. Antivirus software still can't scan inside encrypted zip files, can it? If AV software can't do this, certainly this filter is going to be thwarted.
He voted twice in our last election. What are you talking about?
There's a LOT of apocalpytic literature out there that would make great games. Norse mythology, for one -- Valkyrie Profile took quite a bit, but didn't have a whole lot of story and what WAS there was largely made up by TriAce. There's all kinds of cool stuff they could have used -- like Odin hanging himself, then coming back three days later with knowledge usually known only to those dead. And forget what Left Behind did with it -- just take the Book of Revelations absolutely literally and go for broke.
... Five years later, a resupply mission from the motherland arrives, to find the whole place simply deserted. No bodies, no blood, no signs of struggle, just -- nothing.
If the writers were strong enough, even Roanoke would be a good springboard for a game. A colony that's doing fine
Lovecraft's material came out in the twenties. He's still relevant today. Why should the original release date matter?
No. This is a copyright infringement suit, not a trademark case. Trademark law does work the way you describe -- if you do not defend a trademark, you can lose all protection to it. Trademarks are supposed to identify that the trademarked item comes from a particular source; if world+dog can use it without interference, this vanishes and so does the protection. There are number of high-profile cases of this happening to existing trademarks (see below), so most big corporations with very valuable brand names are quite paranoid about allowing them to be diluted.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aspirin#Trademark_issues
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genericized_trademark
No comparable mechanism exists for copyright. Copyright holders are free to prosecute whoever they want, and ignore other infringers. There are a couple of defenses (if you tell someone they can do something, for instance, you can't sue them anymore) but generally, a copyright holder is perfectly free to leave websites alone and go after those same people for selling deadtree versions of the exact same content. It so happens in this case they have a weak case, but for other reasons (fair use reasons).
Were it done any other way, one of the consequences would be that all fanfiction would have to be cracked down on (otherwise the owners would lose all copyrights). While a lot of people like to make cracks about how bad much fanfiction is, I don't think many would argue it ought to be cracked down on indiscriminately.
Sadly, this is actually the point of most magazines. I forget where I saw this article (it was the one where an insider explains how the PR industry works), but basically magazines make more off their advertisers than they do from direct sales. This is true for pretty much everything except a small handful -- academic journals, mostly, I expect. The exact phrasing, I believe, was to the effect of "Magazines would just give subscriptions away, but the advertisers won't let them -- they think if they give it away, people won't pay any attention to it."
That's why subscriptions are SO much cheaper. Some of it is that you're basically signing a (usually) one-year contract agreeing to buy 12 issues in advance. But a subscriber is not anonymous. They don't have to get approximate numbers on sales. They know exactly how many subscribers they have -- and their names, addresses, and (through various companies that specialize in collimating this kind of data) can usually figure out exactly who you are based on how you pay. Then they get all kinds of demographic info that's quite valuable to advertisers. When was the last time you saw a life insurance ad in any gaming mag? As the demographics shift, eventually that market will be looking to get life insurance (same as everybody else). And the subscriber info is the easiest way for them to track this.
"Beyesian" filtering will be used to filter out those less intelligent than the article authors? Positively iron-clad. This article is a brillant idea, and I'm glad I thought of it.
Let me know when they get around to fudging the data. I'm hungry.
What part of this strikes you as "entirely sensible"?
Shadowrun had a few problems, one of the biggest of which is "license desecration". They took the Shadowrun name, and went and made something totally unlike Shadowrun. The problem here has two parts -- one, the Shadowrun name means little or nothing to people who aren't fans; the Shadowrun property is fairly niche. It isn't like "Dungeons and Dragons" or "Final Fantasy" where you slap a name on something for some cheap extra sales. And two, the people who ARE fans were totally incensed by their decision. They took a very involved RPG setting with a dark, intricate setting and turned it into a storyless shooter. (So little story, in fact, it has no single-player.) I mean, fans were outraged to the point that the developers of the pen-n-paper game made statements disavowing the game and saying "We offered to help them make it something cool, they weren't at all interested."
Oh, I don't worry about that so much anymore. I used to stay up all night worrying about the evil robots, with their beady little eyes and their disturbing resemblence to the Governator. Then I heard about Old Glory Insurance. Now I know that when Skynet sends the robots after me, I'll be covered. And when they grab you with those metal claws, you can't break free... because they're made of metal, and robots are strong.
Old Glory Insurance. For when the metal ones decide to come for you - and they will.
If it's a game I'm done with, then the save doesn't matter. If it is a game I'm either actively playing, or planning on finishing in the near future, the save file is worth (hourly pay rate) times the maximum of (time spent playing to get save || time to be spent replaying to get save back). Some games have rares that are almost impossible to get. The US version of FF4, for instance, had an item only dropped by an enemy 1/64 battles -- and that enemy only appeared 1/64 fights in one particular place. If I'd got lucky and got that in an hour, it might take a hundred to get it back.
Somehow I doubt Archaeology magazine felt the need to attach a disclaimer to this article, trusting most would notice it was a joke. Also, the reason this didn't come out around Halloween is a deliberate delay, probably because the magazine wanted the dead tree (undead tree?) issues to get to the subscribers before they put it online. Why would anyone subscribe if the articles were online before your copy arrived in the mail?
Then again, supposedly the year the BBC did the "spaghetti tree" story for April Fools' they were flooded with calls. I guess Archaeology Mag. just thought the readers would use their braaaaaaaains.
Because if Sony folds then it becomes "Microsoft versus Nintendo". Considering Microsoft's past history, a lot of people aren't too comfortable with that thought.
There's almost no way this particular compound was approved for use in toddler's toys. If they're young enough, the first rule is that if they can get hold of it, they'll try to eat it. Or some will. Enough you have to plan for it. As such toys for really young kids are pretty much required to be nontoxic.
http://www.chicagoartistsresource.org/?q=node/14948
This doesn't address toxicity specifically, but I can't imagine anything that puts kids in comas would fly. Let alone the fact that if it's a precursor to GHB, it's probably illegal just for that alone, as a controlled substance.
Why the article focuses only on video games, I don't know. But it called itself "innovations in game design", and didn't have anything at all to say -- good, bad, whatever -- about anything non-computerized. Consider the evolution of the game of chess, for instance: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origins_of_chess The queen and the bishop both evolved from previously weak pieces. Why? What did the rule changes bring? Surely there is something to be learned here. Why is the Queen a rook and a bishop? Why not a rook and a knight? Why is there no uberqueen (can move like queen or knight)? All of these speak to a certain issue of balance of power -- offhand, I'd say that the rules changes were intended to speed the game up, without making first-mover advantage too powerful. What does that say about game design? Nothing that the authors mention.
;)
Or how about the introduction of playing cards. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Playing_cards Why four suits? The Indian decks referenced can have many more. Why four suits, and why the specific ones we have? Standardization. Consider the vast variety of games played with a deck of cards; how many use nonstandard decks? Very few. But there are far more interesting things about card games -- as evidenced by the fact that poker bots suck.
Video games have been around for a few decades. Chess has been around for the better part of a millenium. Even though I may not be able to answer all the questions I just raised, I knew that they were there. To barely even mention games that are not electronic, in an article on 50 landmark game design innovations seems to me to be the height of folly, or perhaps hubris. (Anyone care to apply game theory to my managing the odds of getting modded troll for that last remark?
And we still don't have machine translation yet. Robots can barely walk! Somehow the human mind is able to figure that out inside of 2 years, but it's mind-bogglingly difficult to program. In any field, there are easy problems. And there are hard problems. Some things simply cannot be done, at any price, no matter how easy they might seem or how long the problem has been around. One of the VERY FIRST things they wanted from computers was machine translation. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Machine_translation#History -- In 1950 they were saying it'd be solved in 3-5 years. In 1950! Computers had barely been invented, and they were saying "just 3-5 years". They've been saying it ever since. What have we got? "Bite the wax tadpole" "You are on the way to destruction" and other mangled text little better than gibberish.
Just because Crohn's disease hasn't been cured, doesn't mean it's due to lack of effort. It may, or it may not. You know how much is poured into cancer and AIDS research every year? How many effective treatments for those do we have? And those have clear causes.
Developing new treatments is hard. Biotech is one of the riskiest fields to invest in, because there are so many hurdles to pass before an advance can be verified; fail at any stage, all your investment is largely worthless. Yes, it is a common criticism that drug companies have chosen to focus on things that make fabulous sums of money -- like the products you mentioned. And that is a problem, but it doesn't mean this particular instance (Crohn's) is a valid example.
Err... no, actually I didn't. But the point still stands, except replace "burned up" with "water damaged". Thanks.
Here's an interesting question. Supposing the plane actually did crash, won't these 'forms' be destroyed in a fiery inferno of burning death? Even if the forms do somehow survive unharmed, how are they going to find them? Is the commander going to make little paper airplanes and fly them out? Is he going to fax them over? Cause, you know, all planes carry fax machines for use in emergencies, in case anyone has any legal papers they need signed.
Say, this give me an idea. Excuse me, I've got to go find the site of a plane crash, so I can plant this document that says everyone on the plane names me their heir.
Seriously. WTF?
There's two groups of people here. One -- people who actually did download music illegally (yes, illegally, it's copyright infringement), and two -- people who are mistakenly accused. When the RIAA makes a mistake (which happens all too often), they don't admit it even when called on it -- they simply continue to demand that the person pay.
The OP's point: This particular individual appears to be a member of group one, but is trying to get in front of groups one and two (the quote about 'this judgement will encourage people, innocent or otherwise, to settle').
Personally, I think the penalties are *outrageous*. More, they probably constitute cruel and unusual punishment. Several hundred thousand dollars for $150 worth of merchandise? $25K is the cost of a car, and the upper limit of the statutory damages could easily pay off several homes. The law is clearly aimed at people running a business, but the it's being applied to clearly aren't. This is true regardless which group she actually is in. She should be on the hook for a tenth of that or less.
As for blaming her for losing -- she had a weak case (the metadata matched known pirate distros, the songs matched her musical taste, the userID is the same as one she's used for years), she got weak legal representation (there are several legal avenues being pursued in other cases that weren't even brought up in this one, and if you don't bring it up you waive it), and she decided to fight. Her attorney should have advised her to take their settlement offer. (Perhaps the first one did, so she found another. We don't know.) Instead, she went to trial. She would have been much better off taking their settlement offer, if she's guilty then she should have known they had a mountain of evidence. Does that mean I think the RIAA should have done what they did? No. But she had multiple opportunities to avoid this, and chose not to use them. So it is fair to say she takes some of the blame. After all, it is quite likely she actually did misappropriate their copyrighted material.
I think I'll take your word for it. That is your ... personal opinion, right?
> People who benefit from the current model will need to embrace a new revenue model, or wait for others to disrupt.
... more ... more ... That would be a great new revenue model -- for EA. It's only the same model used by drug dealers :)
It's far more insidious than that. This is EA, the company known for (among other things) taking things that used to be standard features -- stripping them out -- then trying to sell them to you via micropayments. That is a "new revenue model". Sell the game cheap. Only it isn't the whole game. Most of the cool parts aren't there. Then you get nickeled and dimed to death buying the game that was supposed to be the game you just bought. Getting in is so easy, then you need more
Or how about charging people annual fees? Instead of 'buying' the game, you're only ever renting it. Want to put 150 hours on Disgaea 7? Well, gee, that gets kind of expensive. You should have played the 30 free hours that come with it, then bought the next one. Duh!
I for one do NOT welcome our new revenue model overlords. Call me crazy, but I'll stick with the devil I know. Here is my money -- now get out of my face and let me play *my* game. I have no interest in playing a "lower" price to be allowed to rent from you. You don't get to tell me how many times I can install the game, you don't get to tell me the game's not allowed to run because I haven't paid my subscription. And take those in-game ads and shove em where the sun don't shine (anyplace in your corporate headquarters should do fine, I suspect, what with all the blood-sucking vampires working out of the facility). *
* -- Note the presence of a teensy bit of exaggeration. In-game ads make sense in some instances -- but if I ever have to eat a Whopper to heal in Final Fantasy, I'll have to break out the can o' whup-ass.
Why do you think it's called a ... trojan?
http://www.bash.org/?5489