This is "FOR THE PEOPLE!" just like the RIAA sues people "FOR THE ARTISTS!". You get as much from California as the artists get from the RIAA - Nothing.
Preventing PvP play for example will cause many people who enjoy that sort of play to leave
Yeah, but not preventing it will cause many people who DON'T enjoy being constantly killed to leave. Especially when there's a group of high-level people who dedicate their entire time in the game to killing people minding their own business.
I forgot who, but someone actually went to the address they had listed for their headquarters. It turned out to be completely abandoned, not even any furniture or anything. When that person called and asked about it, he was hung up on. That, combined with the fact that most of the screenshots look like they're coming from his GARAGE (there were some tires sitting in the corner) and the fact that there's never any real concrete evidence of this thing actually existing make this thing winner of the Vaporware of the Year award.
It's good for some things. I know people who have made their own DVRs out of them, and they don't look horribly out of place sitting next to their DVD player and game consoles. Kind of looks like a platinum gamecube sitting there. Sometimes looks matter.
It's still way too much. You could build something similar for well under $1000. They must be making a KILLING on these things, which is good, because at that price not many people will buy them.
It is your choice to work at a place where they monitor usage of the vehicle. Anyways, why should you EXPECT privacy when using the property of other people? Unless they tell you that you're not being monitored when you actually are, I see nothing wrong with it. It's their property, and they have every right to install whatever tracking devices they want on it. Don't like it? Don't use their property.
As for the stolen vehicles being stopped, it's not like when you turn off the engine on a car it immediately comes to a screeching halt. Try it sometime - find a deserted parking lot, drive up to 30 or so, then cut the engine. Everything still works (except acceleration, of course), it's just a little harder to steer at low speeds and braking is a bit harder (but people managed to live without power steering and braking for a long time...). The only accidents this would cause would be someone hitting a car sitting there in the middle of a street, which would be THEIR fault anyway.
The compressor for air conditioning puts more load on your engine. This means more gas needs to be used to keep the engine at the same level of power. I'm not a mechanic, but I'm pretty sure it works that way.
As for how much it uses, I'm not sure. I think people see a 1-2MPG decrease when they have the a/c on.
Try reading the article next time, people. There is no rights violation going on here. This is something people CHOOSE to have installed in their car and actually PAY for the service. It's not like it's automatically placed in every car so that they can watch you wherever you go.
There is no referrer. Try it out yourself - go to Amazon.com then browse to books and then the complete far side. It'll automatically put those "ref=ad_12" tags in there. If it had a referrer link in there, it would look like this:
If it's just a normal Amazon sale, 5%. 2.5% for anything sold by another store or person through Amazon.com (like Target, Marshall Fields, Gap, or Marketplace sales). I think you get 15% for direct-linked books over $15. $20 for every amazon.com credit card sign-up.
To amend to that - what I also want to see is the monsters using the items they're carrying. If a minotaur randomly gets a Kickass Sword of Slaying +3, I want it to actually USE that sword instead of just carrying it around. This would make killing monsters a lot more exciting, since you never know what they could be using against you.
The trouble is that giving the same reward over and over quickly looses it's apeal.
A cure for this was found in the Diablo series of games - random items. It made it so that they gave the same reward over and over, but since there was always a chance if you getting better and better items, it was still VERY addictive. Why no MMORPG has implemented this item system is beyond me. I knew people in Diablo that would spend HOURS and HOURS just searching for items, and getting some relatively nice stuff, too.
Either that or give away more than one free month with the box. If there were, say, three free months added in, it wouldn't be that big of a deal - it would end up working out about the same anyway.
Of course, all that the people at the company see is, "but we'll be losing out on [2 months of subscription fees|$50 / box]!"
More importantly, though, is a TRIAL. How many times have you wanted to try a game, but definitely didn't want to spend $50 for it just to see how good it is? A three-day trial would be enough time for a person to decide whether they like the game or not, and it would most likely be profitable for the compnay since the player will still be in the addictive "honeymoon period" described in the article and have more of a chance of buying it.
The bad part isn't that they're doing it - that's excellent. The bad part is that they don't even ask permission.
If a dialog box popped up that said, "AOL would like to disable the messenger service on your computer. This will help stop pop-up ads. Would you like to allow AOL to do this? [Allow][Do Not Allow]" then it would be fine. They shouldn't just ASSUME that the user has no use for it.
Before I even opened the comments page, I predicted that at least 75% of the replies would be from incredibly witty people calling Gator spyware. So far it looks like I was right.
Slashdot Mirror
This is "FOR THE PEOPLE!" just like the RIAA sues people "FOR THE ARTISTS!". You get as much from California as the artists get from the RIAA - Nothing.
-- Dr. Eldarion --
Preventing PvP play for example will cause many people who enjoy that sort of play to leave
Yeah, but not preventing it will cause many people who DON'T enjoy being constantly killed to leave. Especially when there's a group of high-level people who dedicate their entire time in the game to killing people minding their own business.
The PVP / no PVP server idea is good.
-- Dr. Eldarion --
... and you have a /. troll!
"I'd like to put my anaconda in Portman and create progeny."
-- Dr. Eldarion --
I forgot who, but someone actually went to the address they had listed for their headquarters. It turned out to be completely abandoned, not even any furniture or anything. When that person called and asked about it, he was hung up on. That, combined with the fact that most of the screenshots look like they're coming from his GARAGE (there were some tires sitting in the corner) and the fact that there's never any real concrete evidence of this thing actually existing make this thing winner of the Vaporware of the Year award.
-- Dr. Eldarion --
It's good for some things. I know people who have made their own DVRs out of them, and they don't look horribly out of place sitting next to their DVD player and game consoles. Kind of looks like a platinum gamecube sitting there. Sometimes looks matter.
-- Dr. Eldarion --
The car's output remains the same, there is just less left over to drive the wheels afterwards.
Doesn't that lead to needing more gas to make the same power to the wheels, which means worse gas mileage?
-- Dr. Eldarion --
It's still way too much. You could build something similar for well under $1000. They must be making a KILLING on these things, which is good, because at that price not many people will buy them.
-- Dr. Eldarion --
It is your choice to work at a place where they monitor usage of the vehicle. Anyways, why should you EXPECT privacy when using the property of other people? Unless they tell you that you're not being monitored when you actually are, I see nothing wrong with it. It's their property, and they have every right to install whatever tracking devices they want on it. Don't like it? Don't use their property.
As for the stolen vehicles being stopped, it's not like when you turn off the engine on a car it immediately comes to a screeching halt. Try it sometime - find a deserted parking lot, drive up to 30 or so, then cut the engine. Everything still works (except acceleration, of course), it's just a little harder to steer at low speeds and braking is a bit harder (but people managed to live without power steering and braking for a long time...). The only accidents this would cause would be someone hitting a car sitting there in the middle of a street, which would be THEIR fault anyway.
-- Dr. Eldarion --
The compressor for air conditioning puts more load on your engine. This means more gas needs to be used to keep the engine at the same level of power. I'm not a mechanic, but I'm pretty sure it works that way.
As for how much it uses, I'm not sure. I think people see a 1-2MPG decrease when they have the a/c on.
-- Dr. Eldarion --
Try reading the article next time, people. There is no rights violation going on here. This is something people CHOOSE to have installed in their car and actually PAY for the service. It's not like it's automatically placed in every car so that they can watch you wherever you go.
-- Dr. Eldarion --
There is no referrer. Try it out yourself - go to Amazon.com then browse to books and then the complete far side. It'll automatically put those "ref=ad_12" tags in there. If it had a referrer link in there, it would look like this:
3 5/ REFERRERNAME-20/
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/07407211
Where the referrername-20 part is replaced with the name of the site. For instance, for my site, it's dealmeinnet-20.
-- Dr. Eldarion --
If it's just a normal Amazon sale, 5%. 2.5% for anything sold by another store or person through Amazon.com (like Target, Marshall Fields, Gap, or Marketplace sales). I think you get 15% for direct-linked books over $15. $20 for every amazon.com credit card sign-up.
-- Dr. Eldarion --
Nope, the referrer tag for amazon looks like this:
3 5/ dealmeinnet-20?creative=125581&camp=2321&link_code =as1
d ea lmeinnet-20&path=tg/browse/-/548166
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/07407211
or
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/redirect?tag=
There's no referrer tag in that link. Those tags show up just from browsing around Amazon.
-- Dr. Eldarion --
To amend to that - what I also want to see is the monsters using the items they're carrying. If a minotaur randomly gets a Kickass Sword of Slaying +3, I want it to actually USE that sword instead of just carrying it around. This would make killing monsters a lot more exciting, since you never know what they could be using against you.
-- Dr. Eldarion --
The trouble is that giving the same reward over and over quickly looses it's apeal.
A cure for this was found in the Diablo series of games - random items. It made it so that they gave the same reward over and over, but since there was always a chance if you getting better and better items, it was still VERY addictive. Why no MMORPG has implemented this item system is beyond me. I knew people in Diablo that would spend HOURS and HOURS just searching for items, and getting some relatively nice stuff, too.
-- Dr. Eldarion --
Either that or give away more than one free month with the box. If there were, say, three free months added in, it wouldn't be that big of a deal - it would end up working out about the same anyway.
Of course, all that the people at the company see is, "but we'll be losing out on [2 months of subscription fees|$50 / box]!"
More importantly, though, is a TRIAL. How many times have you wanted to try a game, but definitely didn't want to spend $50 for it just to see how good it is? A three-day trial would be enough time for a person to decide whether they like the game or not, and it would most likely be profitable for the compnay since the player will still be in the addictive "honeymoon period" described in the article and have more of a chance of buying it.
-- Dr. Eldarion --
The bad part isn't that they're doing it - that's excellent. The bad part is that they don't even ask permission.
If a dialog box popped up that said, "AOL would like to disable the messenger service on your computer. This will help stop pop-up ads. Would you like to allow AOL to do this? [Allow][Do Not Allow]" then it would be fine. They shouldn't just ASSUME that the user has no use for it.
-- Dr. Eldarion --
Yeah, I hate still having to deal with horrible projects like Bob.
-- Dr. Eldarion --
I think it has more to do with the fact that everyone and their mom already has a PS2, so there's nobody left to buy one.
-- Dr. Eldarion --
10. ???
11. Profit!
-- Dr. Eldarion --
Who has to say 'yes' or 'no' and have it mean something?
I assume the people who actually have to work there have the final say.
-- Dr. Eldarion --
The name of the bill is a little bit misleading. When I first read it, I read it as "[you] can spam" as opposed to "can (get rid of) spam".
It's a shame that they think it won't go anywhere, though...
-- Dr. Eldarion --
Obligatory paypalsucks.org link with all the fun horror stories of people getting screwed over by Paypal.
-- Dr. Eldarion --
Before I even opened the comments page, I predicted that at least 75% of the replies would be from incredibly witty people calling Gator spyware. So far it looks like I was right.
-- Dr. Eldarion --
Think: what do odd version numbers imply?
Bad Star Trek movies?
-- Dr. Eldarion --