Goodness me. I think I am going into a new business. This quote:
The fines relate only to the 2 million emails the trio allegedly sent to New Zealand addresses, which netted them more than $US2 million in sales commissions.
from this news article on the Sydney Morning Herald today.
Lordy. I just scrolled down and read a bazzillion (it's a real word. Just ask George Dubya) posts with the following. To stop a bazzillion more people posting the same thing, a quick rundown of what people have already thought of:
People other than drivers use phones.
There is a function to turn the feature off.
It would seem that it would get turned on in a train automatically too.
Yes, people use phones in taxi's.
If you were going to post along those lines, save your typing fingers. It's like those four points over and over again for the page of comments.
Australian students may not choose Linux when they leave school, but they will be more likely to have a choice when the time comes.
I would argue that you are close to right, but not quite on the head of the nail. When the time comes to choose, students will be able to make the choice based on two FAMILIAR products. The windows PC that mum and dad have at home, and the OSS system that they have now become used to at school.
What held me back for such a long time to have one open source install at home? I didn't want to go through the learning process of getting used to it. That won't be an issue for these kids.
Find some aliens who are about to attack earth and need to come out with some greeting to earth. Maybe something along the "Hello world." lines. For some extra features though, you may want to include translation software back that can understand when a human says something along the lines of "I for one welcome our new overlords..."
I do not think any game guarantees that kind of value (nor should it).
That's the exact point. If you go with item ownership, then you buy an ITEM. You do not but a speculative state of an item.
That's the whole issue with item ownership. It opens up a ton of murky brackish concepts that no-one has the real answers for. It also makes any legality around items that anyone could propose an utter nightmare.
I suspect you're thinking about this from a Second Life point of view and I'm thinking about this from a WoW point of view. Second Life is such dangerous territory to enter I'm positive that it will create problems that no one in positions of authority will have the slightest clue in dealing with until they are dead and replaced by people who grew up with such games.
Actually, not at all. I have never played Second Life. I have however played the following (roughly in order) Ultima Online. Everquest. Ragnarok Online. Star Wars Galaxies. Everquest Two. World of Warcraft. Warhammer Online. Yes, I broke the EULA and generally sold accounts when I was done with them. Ultime Online dual account for $1600, Everquest for $700, Staw Wars for $800. Ragnarok for $200 I think. Now, each of these accounts had both great characters, but generally a LOT of valuable items. (I had a lot of server rares in UO for example. Not daily rares, but true server rares for those that recall back that far). Now, when I sold these accounts there was no item ownership at all. If there was though, consider that these are reasonably valuable items/accounts that someone has paid for - ergo if something goes wrong with them, said someone is likely to be rather miffed about it. Being that much of this sort of thing happens in the USA, said miffed person is likely to go running to a very understanding lawyer. Said lawyer sees nothing but $$$.
I don't have all the answers with this. I would really however recommend that before any case ever gets to trial with this sort of thing, all the questions and answers are laid out in black and white. Otherwise we are in all sorts of trouble.
For the games companies, this one is a nightmare. Think about some of the points that need addressing: (And I admit I have not RTFA)
If you own the virtual items, things like a rollback causes you loss. You can demand they be returned.
If you own an item, and the developers decide that it is too powerful, and they nerf it. Do you need to be compensated? Should you be?
If you can buy and sell items ingame legally as your own items you are actually selling something that is beyond your control. You are selling data, but in reality you are selling a virtual item - really messy around IP with that from a legal aspect.
If you own the goods in your characters inventory what happens when you find out that the game is really old, no-one plays it and it's going to be scrapped? Do they fax you a printout?
If it's items you own, what about your character itself? What about ingame houses and real estate?
Yeah, looks, I got to say, this isn't the first time these have been seen. Sony has even managed to market (albeit smaller earth sized versions) of the same thing:
When you have customers with thick clients, sell em thin ones cause they are "better-er".
When you have flogged off all of your customers with a thin client, the new thing is a "better-er-er" thick client.
Whole thing sounds like very simple 101 style marketing. Why try to sell someone something they have? Convince them what you have is better. Total no-brainer imo.
Not to be daft, and certainly not to promote a pro-patent view on/. but isn't this pretty much the exact purpose of a patent rather than the vague bland ones that seem to be making the way in droves? I say if you develop some tricky algorithm to make phones "work faster" than you should be allowed to patent it, and flog it off to the carriers.
If you ask me, it's the IBM Patent space Patent patents that we should all be worrying about. It someone invents something, power to them. If you patent something that is simply there to make it harder for others to be creative - THAT is when we should be writing to our collective members.
Why can't people just use their common sense when it comes to patents?
There we go, as I said, I am no expert on cars, but if you put the gist of what I said with the more accurate technical detail in here it likely makes more of a point.
Not to be rude, but informative != wrong. (Maybe wrongly informative?)
If you value your clutch, do NOT sit with your foot on the clutch while rolling down a hill. Quickest way short of riding it to need a replacement.
Also there is utterly NOTHING wrong with using your engine to brake with - especially over long distances/downhill sections. Firstly is stops your brake pads getting overheated and burning out, secondly it doesn't use more fuel at all it is in fact the lack of fuel available that causes the vehicle to slow down.
Man, I don't consider myself an expert on cars, but I would dearly love to be your mechanic.
The whole thing just sounds like a glorified Windows Update, not a stand along product.
Ergo: Another great way to blast any last bit of performance out from under your brand new PC brought to you by Microsoft. PS. You may recognize me from such things as Vista and Windows XP.
It would all be funny and right in your post, if your country (or any for that matter) could continue to exist without a banking and finance group. If any other sector that wasn't needed made such a monumental cockup it would simply self implode and everyone would be "sorry about that mishap, but lets move on". Because however that banking (and insurance, and healthcare and other such operations) are so vital for a country, yes, you do have to cover for their mistakes with your taxes. If you don't it will be much worse.
Should the managers and bankers that allowed it to get to this level be punished? Certainly. In Australia when we had a major insurance company meltdown we put the blighter in jail for it. If I were American, I would be expecting the prison population to be filled up with bankers and lenders in the near future.
No, gravitational lensing would not change the observations. Gravitation lensing works by bending light through the sheer force of gravity of supermassive objects. Be this slight bend, the light waves are expanded (thereby making them appear closer). If would not however change the size of the star visible, the heat signature it gives off, the wobble caused by the planet or how quickly the planet orbits the sun.
Apart from no-one understanding what formed this planet and why it is so dense, I don't see how this is a big breakthrough. They have found many bigger planets, many faster orbiting planets, many much other things.
I am content just to know that there is a rather heavy planet in orbit somewhere.
It's not a handout. It's more an A grade league for the top end, and a "Little League" for the kiddies with some small cash prizes derived off entry fees.
It's not gambling - unless they try to add gambling on outcomes by non participants, which I think would be very unlikely, and the article gave no mention of this.
Tax revenue could possibly do it, but given the steady flow of money into the events through players, they should be able to keep local taxes paid if needed.
Federal Revenue, possibly but also unlikely, see above.
If you ask me, what's going to kill this is getting people to play for real money.
Thnk about the following:
Would I pay to play the same games that I can play for free?
Would the average games who plays too much really have the cash/incentive to whip out a credit card and play the same stuff in a competition?
Personally, I wish em luck, but just can't see this sustaining itself for too long at all.
But this isn't about that you paranoid little pumpkin. It's about limiting a car's performance based on one of two keys. It doesn't limit the speed based on some implant in the road (Had to sneak in that word) you can still get caught for speeding - you just can't floor it to silly levels.
In Australia, this would be quite popular I dare say. We have a Provisional (P Plates) license that during the first year limits users to 80km/h and during the next two years limits them to 100km/h even though just about every freeway has a 100km restriction.
Slashdot Mirror
Hmmm, that's one thing I don't want to lick to find out.
How many juries do we need?
If you can afford them, keep running through juries till you get one that gives you the answer you want.
Indeed. Some are all about the fathers instead.
The fines relate only to the 2 million emails the trio allegedly sent to New Zealand addresses, which netted them more than $US2 million in sales commissions.
from this news article on the Sydney Morning Herald today.
Lordy. I just scrolled down and read a bazzillion (it's a real word. Just ask George Dubya) posts with the following. To stop a bazzillion more people posting the same thing, a quick rundown of what people have already thought of:
People other than drivers use phones.
There is a function to turn the feature off.
It would seem that it would get turned on in a train automatically too.
Yes, people use phones in taxi's.
If you were going to post along those lines, save your typing fingers. It's like those four points over and over again for the page of comments.
Australian students may not choose Linux when they leave school, but they will be more likely to have a choice when the time comes.
I would argue that you are close to right, but not quite on the head of the nail. When the time comes to choose, students will be able to make the choice based on two FAMILIAR products. The windows PC that mum and dad have at home, and the OSS system that they have now become used to at school.
What held me back for such a long time to have one open source install at home? I didn't want to go through the learning process of getting used to it. That won't be an issue for these kids.
Find some aliens who are about to attack earth and need to come out with some greeting to earth. Maybe something along the "Hello world." lines. For some extra features though, you may want to include translation software back that can understand when a human says something along the lines of "I for one welcome our new overlords..."
I for one welcome our...
I do not think any game guarantees that kind of value (nor should it).
That's the exact point. If you go with item ownership, then you buy an ITEM. You do not but a speculative state of an item.
That's the whole issue with item ownership. It opens up a ton of murky brackish concepts that no-one has the real answers for. It also makes any legality around items that anyone could propose an utter nightmare.
I suspect you're thinking about this from a Second Life point of view and I'm thinking about this from a WoW point of view. Second Life is such dangerous territory to enter I'm positive that it will create problems that no one in positions of authority will have the slightest clue in dealing with until they are dead and replaced by people who grew up with such games.
Actually, not at all. I have never played Second Life. I have however played the following (roughly in order) Ultima Online. Everquest. Ragnarok Online. Star Wars Galaxies. Everquest Two. World of Warcraft. Warhammer Online.
Yes, I broke the EULA and generally sold accounts when I was done with them. Ultime Online dual account for $1600, Everquest for $700, Staw Wars for $800. Ragnarok for $200 I think. Now, each of these accounts had both great characters, but generally a LOT of valuable items. (I had a lot of server rares in UO for example. Not daily rares, but true server rares for those that recall back that far). Now, when I sold these accounts there was no item ownership at all. If there was though, consider that these are reasonably valuable items/accounts that someone has paid for - ergo if something goes wrong with them, said someone is likely to be rather miffed about it. Being that much of this sort of thing happens in the USA, said miffed person is likely to go running to a very understanding lawyer. Said lawyer sees nothing but $$$.
I don't have all the answers with this. I would really however recommend that before any case ever gets to trial with this sort of thing, all the questions and answers are laid out in black and white. Otherwise we are in all sorts of trouble.
For the games companies, this one is a nightmare. Think about some of the points that need addressing: (And I admit I have not RTFA)
If you own the virtual items, things like a rollback causes you loss. You can demand they be returned.
If you own an item, and the developers decide that it is too powerful, and they nerf it. Do you need to be compensated? Should you be?
If you can buy and sell items ingame legally as your own items you are actually selling something that is beyond your control. You are selling data, but in reality you are selling a virtual item - really messy around IP with that from a legal aspect.
If you own the goods in your characters inventory what happens when you find out that the game is really old, no-one plays it and it's going to be scrapped? Do they fax you a printout?
If it's items you own, what about your character itself? What about ingame houses and real estate?
Yeah, looks, I got to say, this isn't the first time these have been seen. Sony has even managed to market (albeit smaller earth sized versions) of the same thing:
Saturn Rings for your car
Bam! Even good ol' "Anon Coward" can get in with q quick left right combo on the dumb. I love /.
...that's not a moon!
When you have customers with thick clients, sell em thin ones cause they are "better-er".
When you have flogged off all of your customers with a thin client, the new thing is a "better-er-er" thick client.
Whole thing sounds like very simple 101 style marketing. Why try to sell someone something they have? Convince them what you have is better. Total no-brainer imo.
Not to be daft, and certainly not to promote a pro-patent view on /. but isn't this pretty much the exact purpose of a patent rather than the vague bland ones that seem to be making the way in droves? I say if you develop some tricky algorithm to make phones "work faster" than you should be allowed to patent it, and flog it off to the carriers.
If you ask me, it's the IBM Patent space Patent patents that we should all be worrying about. It someone invents something, power to them. If you patent something that is simply there to make it harder for others to be creative - THAT is when we should be writing to our collective members.
Why can't people just use their common sense when it comes to patents?
Apparently not the banks in Iceland. The pommies can't even withdraw a dime it seems.
There we go, as I said, I am no expert on cars, but if you put the gist of what I said with the more accurate technical detail in here it likely makes more of a point.
Either way, don't ride your brakes.
Not to be rude, but informative != wrong. (Maybe wrongly informative?)
If you value your clutch, do NOT sit with your foot on the clutch while rolling down a hill. Quickest way short of riding it to need a replacement.
Also there is utterly NOTHING wrong with using your engine to brake with - especially over long distances/downhill sections. Firstly is stops your brake pads getting overheated and burning out, secondly it doesn't use more fuel at all it is in fact the lack of fuel available that causes the vehicle to slow down.
Man, I don't consider myself an expert on cars, but I would dearly love to be your mechanic.
The whole thing just sounds like a glorified Windows Update, not a stand along product.
Ergo: Another great way to blast any last bit of performance out from under your brand new PC brought to you by Microsoft. PS. You may recognize me from such things as Vista and Windows XP.
.... that's no moon!
It would all be funny and right in your post, if your country (or any for that matter) could continue to exist without a banking and finance group. If any other sector that wasn't needed made such a monumental cockup it would simply self implode and everyone would be "sorry about that mishap, but lets move on". Because however that banking (and insurance, and healthcare and other such operations) are so vital for a country, yes, you do have to cover for their mistakes with your taxes. If you don't it will be much worse.
Should the managers and bankers that allowed it to get to this level be punished? Certainly. In Australia when we had a major insurance company meltdown we put the blighter in jail for it. If I were American, I would be expecting the prison population to be filled up with bankers and lenders in the near future.
One of my mates got this email that he posted on our forums. Gave us all a great laugh.
Dear American - it's just classic.
No, gravitational lensing would not change the observations. Gravitation lensing works by bending light through the sheer force of gravity of supermassive objects. Be this slight bend, the light waves are expanded (thereby making them appear closer). If would not however change the size of the star visible, the heat signature it gives off, the wobble caused by the planet or how quickly the planet orbits the sun.
Apart from no-one understanding what formed this planet and why it is so dense, I don't see how this is a big breakthrough. They have found many bigger planets, many faster orbiting planets, many much other things.
I am content just to know that there is a rather heavy planet in orbit somewhere.
It's not a handout. It's more an A grade league for the top end, and a "Little League" for the kiddies with some small cash prizes derived off entry fees.
I dare say none of those three.
It's not gambling - unless they try to add gambling on outcomes by non participants, which I think would be very unlikely, and the article gave no mention of this.
Tax revenue could possibly do it, but given the steady flow of money into the events through players, they should be able to keep local taxes paid if needed.
Federal Revenue, possibly but also unlikely, see above.
If you ask me, what's going to kill this is getting people to play for real money.
Thnk about the following:
Would I pay to play the same games that I can play for free?
Would the average games who plays too much really have the cash/incentive to whip out a credit card and play the same stuff in a competition?
Personally, I wish em luck, but just can't see this sustaining itself for too long at all.
But this isn't about that you paranoid little pumpkin. It's about limiting a car's performance based on one of two keys. It doesn't limit the speed based on some implant in the road (Had to sneak in that word) you can still get caught for speeding - you just can't floor it to silly levels.
In Australia, this would be quite popular I dare say. We have a Provisional (P Plates) license that during the first year limits users to 80km/h and during the next two years limits them to 100km/h even though just about every freeway has a 100km restriction.