Is the EULA considered a legal contract? If so, wouldn't the work around be to simply have someone under the age of 18 (usually the legal age for entering into a contract) agree to the EULA then pass a copy of the spyware over for research? Since the minor cannot legally enter into the contract, they are not bound by the contract and the person/company receiving the spyware never agreed to the EULA, so they aren't bound by it either.
Having played CoH for 1 year and having attained the coveted level 50, I was happy to hear about CoV being released (I was getting bored of making new toons and levelling them again). I participated in the Beta and I guess my excitement over it was more about my boredom with CoH. But the excitement has worn off, quite quickly actually since I stopped playing about 1 week ago and the game was only released to the general public at the end of October. My problems with CoV (not in any order):
1) It looks and feels like a re-skinned CoH. Most of the missions take place in the same CoH locations (office buildings, caves, etc.), just with different skins.
2)Missions are the same as CoH. Most of the missions, with the exception of the bank and casino robberies, are the same missions as CoH. The "kidnap so-and-so" mission is just the CoH "rescue so-and-so" mission. The "clear out the X's from Y location" is just the CoH "clear out the X's from Y location". Its all just the same.
3)If I play a villain why can't I randomly attack the citizens walking down the street? Why?
4)If I am a villain, why are all my missions to go fight other baddies such as Skulls, Hellions, Family, etc.? Shouldn't I be fighting heroes?
5)If heroes have SGs (Super Groups) why do villains have SGs? Shouldn't it be VGs (Villain Groups)?
6)Most of the power sets are the same as CoH. This one bugged me alot. Where was the creativity in coming up with new powers? Rather than just shuffling them around and recombining them.
7)Only one truly new archetype, the Master Mind. All the other archetypes are just the same ones from CoH, only renamed. Brute == Tank, Stalker == Scrapper, Dominator == Controller, and Corrupter == Defender. No creativity here.
8)I feel like a hero more than a villain. There is nothing villainous about what you do in the game. This one bugged the most. They should have called it CoV - City of Vigilantes.
If you've played CoH, then you've played CoV. There is very little new content. This is extremely disappointing.
If you are playing CoV, and are enjoying being a Master Mind, enjoy it now while you can. It won't be long before the dev's get out their nerf gun and nerf the crap out of Master Minds. The archetype is just too powerful as far as the game goes. Considering that when a Master Mind has all his/her pets its a total of 6 (including the player). That means a team of 8 Master Minds is composed of 48 beings/creatures/players. 48 things working a mission meant for 8! Yeah, you can bet they will be nerfing Master Minds very soon.....like they did with Controllers in CoH.
How am I going to know what pages to buy? Am I going to be allowed to read through the book online and only buy the pages I want? Wouldn't that then mean I could just read the entire book online and not buy anything? Or do I need to already have access to a copy of the book and then buy the pages I want? So, why would I then buy from Amazon, since I already have access to a copy of the book?
Why isn't there some sort of time limit on how long you can sit back before choosing to file lawsuits against companies over patent infringement? XML has been in widespread use for at least 2 years if not longer. This company had to know it was out there and being used. So, they had to know it infringed on their patent.
Why didn't they stand up and say anything earlier? Oh yeah...because back then it would have meant alot less money to be gained. Doesn't this amount to blackmail? Or borders on racketeering?
...I have an option for purchasing the widescreen version of the movie on DVD. I also like the "try before you buy" idea that fellow Slashdotters are mentioning.
Had the professor used some of these devices, or at least a little common sense, he would have been able to judge the rate at which each student was understanding his lessons. Those who didn't keep up could be tutored separately, outside of class. Instead of charging ahead into new, more complex concepts, he could have spent more time on the things he was doing a poor job of explaining. Instead, the class snowballed into a giant clusterfuck of confusion and waste for all involved.
I don't see how a clicker would have prevented a student that didn't understand a concept from asking a question. Well...unless the schools say, "You aren't allowed to ask questions only to answer them with your clicker." But, what kind of education would that be? However your one minor point...or at least a little common sense... hits the nail right on the head. The teacher should have instructed the student to come see him after class or during lunch. Clickers would not have solved this problem.
I agree with the grandparent posting, part of school is to socialize students, get them interacting, have discussions in class and promote thinking. Allowing students to "click" through lessons does none of these.
Not sure why you called my comment a conspiracy theory. I am just stating an opinion based upon past actions. Every time a new technology comes out patents and lawsuits fly left and right. I never said who he was going to be sued by...you seem to be assuming that I was thinking auto makers or the oil industry would hit him with lawsuits. If you RTFA you would see that there already is a lawsuit between two rival manufacturers of a similar product.
Just because something works doesn't mean it's not obsolescent. I don't care what it's doing, a fifteen-year-old machine is obsolete NOW.
Well, that's strictly your opinion. You are probably one of those unfortunate people that have bought into the whole "upgrade computer hardware every two years" marketing ploy. That's all it is, a ploy to keep sales up. If the hardware is reliable, running necessary services and running those services properly and able to meet the needs of the people using those services, it is not obsolete.
Sun builds their sparc hardware to last. Hence it is more expensive than just walking into your local Best Buy and grabbing a PC off the shelf.
If and only if you can find the factual information among the fluff will I agree that more information can make one smarter.
The problem today is that kids cannot critically read a book or journal or paper and retrieve useful information from it. They are far too reliant on Google to do their critical reasoning for them. Many of them cannot even tell the difference between the fluff (or the blatently incorrect information) and the factual information that is relevant to the project/paper they are working on. Computers are a tool to be used when working towards a solution. Unfortunately today they are being touted as the solution.
I can understand Disney having your name and address for annual or season ticket holders, since they probably send them to you in the mail. But, if you show up at the park one day and want to buy tickets and pay in cash, do they specifically ask you for personal information?
If not, who cares if they take finger prints, retina scans or probe every orafice of your body...they have no personal information to tie it to, so they have no clue who the scans belong to.
Now, if they do require personal information for a cash purchase of one day or one week tickets....that's a different story.
A better design would be to have the top of the case be intake and the bottom of the case exhaust. You could even make it so that the top half or both the left and right sides intake with the bottom half of both sides exhaust. This would provide "clean" air from above, and blow all the potato chips and dust bunnies across the floor. Of course "clean" is a relative term.
So, either he hacked the world's biggest computer or he weighs 900 pounds.
Which is it?
Personally I am hoping the its the latter one...it would be pretty funny to see him mashing the keyboard with his hand because his fingers are too fat for the keys. Of course he could order a "dialing stick" (ala Simpsons) to type with.;-)
Install a PGP client on your office computer. Get a friend to do the same and share your public keys. Encrypt a few messages and send them back and forth using your company e-mail.
Watch them squeel when they can't read your e-mail.
What's that they fired you? For what? Because they couldn't read your e-mail?
Take them to court and sue the bastards for wrongful dismissal. They would have to prove that you leaked company information...if that was their basis for firing you.
If you think about it, this really is a smart move on the part of Apple. Now, they will port the Mac OS to Intel. This means that it just opened up a previously closed market for their OS.
This means that people can now select whatever hardware they want, and have a choice to run Mac OS on it...that is if the hardware is supported/compatible. This is a good thing...this is not a bad thing. This means that the Mac OS now has the potential to switch from being a niche market OS to a main stream, viable alternative to Microsoft Windows, OS. Yes, I know there are those zealots out there that would say that it already is a mainstream OS, but the Mac OS doesn't have anywhere near the market penetration that Windows does.
The only down side is the fact that currently there are few viruses/exploits for the Mac OS because it wasn't popular enough for "hackers" to bother exploiting. Hopefully Apple will take this into consideration and build better security and support into their OS....security and support that Microsoft has been promising us lately but has yet to deliver.
I honestly don't think many people are understanding this whole thing. PMUse got it...and I will add a little extra in hopes the rest of you understand too.
Read this passage, copied directly from the article Unfortunately, if an over-zealous special agent on a fishing expedition wants to know who checked out Anti-Flag's album The Terror State yesterday, the librarian will probably have little choice. Under the USA PATRIOT Act, he or she would have to surrender the personal identity information that was originally collected to protect the library's materials.
Ok? Now...go back a read it again.
The fundamental problem here is not the libraries, and not the patrons of the libraries. The fundamental problem is that rights an freedoms are being abused and stripped away. Why should you have to even worry about whether or not your "reading history" at your local library will be investigated? What kind of a country do you live in where this would even have to be taken into consideration? Is this the former Soviet Union? Or is this the United States of America?
People will just think that they paid $15 for a book and will keep it. The libraries won't have any books left.
Want to buy a book? Go to a bookstore.
Want to borrow a book? Provide identification, get a borrows card, and check out a book from your library.
Don't want to share your personal information in order to borrow a book? Too bad. Don't like it? Fine, go here
Re:A game developer's response...
on
A Gamer's Manifesto
·
· Score: 2, Informative
daVinci1980
3. Don't bullshit me about your graphics We wouldn't have to, except that by the logic in argument 2 this seems to be the #1 thing that people care about. You vote with your dollars. Your mouth is saying "graphics don't matter" but your wallet says "grapihcs are all that I care about. Shit in the box as long as the graphics are top notch." Doom 3, Unreal 3, Half-life 2... All top sellers because of their stellar unrelated gameplay?
Reread the article. You are missing the author's point. He is not arguing on this point that there should be more to a game than top-notch graphics. He's arguing that game publishers/developers should stop showing us consumers just the cut scene graphics and telling us this is what the game looks. If its a cut scene graphic, tell us its a cut scene graphic and then show us actually game-play graphics as well. I have lost count the number of times I have been severely disappointed by a game because all the box had (or even magazine advertisement) was the cut scene graphics. Then when I load it, I find that the actual game-play graphics (you know those graphics that I will be staring at for 99.9% of the time I am playing the game) look like they were drawn by a bunch of retarded monkeys. Its 2005 for crying out loud. Make the actual game graphics look like the cut scene graphics!!!
Anyone living within the borders of the United States of America, now lives within a Police State.
Try and deny it, you can't. This is not flame bait it is the truth. If you think this is flame bait,then you are trying to deny the truth....open your eyes and look around. You're rights are being crushed, violated, and stripped away more and more. Why can't you see this? Why do you consider this acceptable? Stop being sheep....fight back!!!
God, who cares. Everyone has their personal preferences. Windows has flaws, Linux has flaws, Mac OS has flaws, nothing is perfect. I work exclusively in Solaris for my job, because that's what I do...and it too has flaws. I have a Windows box at home to play games on because so far none of the alternatives can offer every game I want to play. I'm really getting sick of this whole, "My platform is better than yours." crap.
You don't like something? Then don't use it. But shut up with the whole "hitting everyone else over the head with it" attitude.
That would be great....batteries that last a long time. Too bad they have already ruined the product's chances by using the word nuclear.
No matter how hard they try, how well they advertise, or how many safety studies they publish, the common, ignorant, consumer will completely avoid this product and most likely hold demonstrations banning its use and its production. All it will take is one hysterical comment like "...but its nuclear so that means that your laptop will explode and blow up half a city.." or better yet "...nuclear powered devices are just giving more potential weapons to terrorists..."
The American government stole ("nationalized") the property of a lot of British citizens (United Empire Loyalists) who then fled to Canada. Many of their decendants have legitimate claims on large tracts of land in your country (including much of Manhatten).
Slashdot Mirror
Is the EULA considered a legal contract? If so, wouldn't the work around be to simply have someone under the age of 18 (usually the legal age for entering into a contract) agree to the EULA then pass a copy of the spyware over for research? Since the minor cannot legally enter into the contract, they are not bound by the contract and the person/company receiving the spyware never agreed to the EULA, so they aren't bound by it either.
IANAL, but just wondering if this would work?
Having played CoH for 1 year and having attained the coveted level 50, I was happy to hear about CoV being released (I was getting bored of making new toons and levelling them again). I participated in the Beta and I guess my excitement over it was more about my boredom with CoH. But the excitement has worn off, quite quickly actually since I stopped playing about 1 week ago and the game was only released to the general public at the end of October. My problems with CoV (not in any order):
1) It looks and feels like a re-skinned CoH. Most of the missions take place in the same CoH locations (office buildings, caves, etc.), just with different skins.
2)Missions are the same as CoH. Most of the missions, with the exception of the bank and casino robberies, are the same missions as CoH. The "kidnap so-and-so" mission is just the CoH "rescue so-and-so" mission. The "clear out the X's from Y location" is just the CoH "clear out the X's from Y location". Its all just the same.
3)If I play a villain why can't I randomly attack the citizens walking down the street? Why?
4)If I am a villain, why are all my missions to go fight other baddies such as Skulls, Hellions, Family, etc.? Shouldn't I be fighting heroes?
5)If heroes have SGs (Super Groups) why do villains have SGs? Shouldn't it be VGs (Villain Groups)?
6)Most of the power sets are the same as CoH. This one bugged me alot. Where was the creativity in coming up with new powers? Rather than just shuffling them around and recombining them.
7)Only one truly new archetype, the Master Mind. All the other archetypes are just the same ones from CoH, only renamed. Brute == Tank, Stalker == Scrapper, Dominator == Controller, and Corrupter == Defender. No creativity here.
8)I feel like a hero more than a villain. There is nothing villainous about what you do in the game. This one bugged the most. They should have called it CoV - City of Vigilantes.
If you've played CoH, then you've played CoV. There is very little new content. This is extremely disappointing.
If you are playing CoV, and are enjoying being a Master Mind, enjoy it now while you can. It won't be long before the dev's get out their nerf gun and nerf the crap out of Master Minds. The archetype is just too powerful as far as the game goes. Considering that when a Master Mind has all his/her pets its a total of 6 (including the player). That means a team of 8 Master Minds is composed of 48 beings/creatures/players. 48 things working a mission meant for 8! Yeah, you can bet they will be nerfing Master Minds very soon.....like they did with Controllers in CoH.
How am I going to know what pages to buy? Am I going to be allowed to read through the book online and only buy the pages I want? Wouldn't that then mean I could just read the entire book online and not buy anything? Or do I need to already have access to a copy of the book and then buy the pages I want? So, why would I then buy from Amazon, since I already have access to a copy of the book?
This business plan makes no sense.
Why isn't there some sort of time limit on how long you can sit back before choosing to file lawsuits against companies over patent infringement? XML has been in widespread use for at least 2 years if not longer. This company had to know it was out there and being used. So, they had to know it infringed on their patent.
Why didn't they stand up and say anything earlier? Oh yeah...because back then it would have meant alot less money to be gained. Doesn't this amount to blackmail? Or borders on racketeering?
...I have an option for purchasing the widescreen version of the movie on DVD. I also like the "try before you buy" idea that fellow Slashdotters are mentioning.
Had the professor used some of these devices, or at least a little common sense, he would have been able to judge the rate at which each student was understanding his lessons. Those who didn't keep up could be tutored separately, outside of class. Instead of charging ahead into new, more complex concepts, he could have spent more time on the things he was doing a poor job of explaining. Instead, the class snowballed into a giant clusterfuck of confusion and waste for all involved.
...or at least a little common sense... hits the nail right on the head. The teacher should have instructed the student to come see him after class or during lunch. Clickers would not have solved this problem.
I don't see how a clicker would have prevented a student that didn't understand a concept from asking a question. Well...unless the schools say, "You aren't allowed to ask questions only to answer them with your clicker." But, what kind of education would that be? However your one minor point
I agree with the grandparent posting, part of school is to socialize students, get them interacting, have discussions in class and promote thinking. Allowing students to "click" through lessons does none of these.
Not sure why you called my comment a conspiracy theory. I am just stating an opinion based upon past actions. Every time a new technology comes out patents and lawsuits fly left and right. I never said who he was going to be sued by...you seem to be assuming that I was thinking auto makers or the oil industry would hit him with lawsuits. If you RTFA you would see that there already is a lawsuit between two rival manufacturers of a similar product.
...too bad he's going to be sued into oblivion if it actually works.
Just because something works doesn't mean it's not obsolescent. I don't care what it's doing, a fifteen-year-old machine is obsolete NOW.
Well, that's strictly your opinion. You are probably one of those unfortunate people that have bought into the whole "upgrade computer hardware every two years" marketing ploy. That's all it is, a ploy to keep sales up. If the hardware is reliable, running necessary services and running those services properly and able to meet the needs of the people using those services, it is not obsolete.
Sun builds their sparc hardware to last. Hence it is more expensive than just walking into your local Best Buy and grabbing a PC off the shelf.
If and only if you can find the factual information among the fluff will I agree that more information can make one smarter.
The problem today is that kids cannot critically read a book or journal or paper and retrieve useful information from it. They are far too reliant on Google to do their critical reasoning for them. Many of them cannot even tell the difference between the fluff (or the blatently incorrect information) and the factual information that is relevant to the project/paper they are working on. Computers are a tool to be used when working towards a solution. Unfortunately today they are being touted as the solution.
I can understand Disney having your name and address for annual or season ticket holders, since they probably send them to you in the mail. But, if you show up at the park one day and want to buy tickets and pay in cash, do they specifically ask you for personal information?
If not, who cares if they take finger prints, retina scans or probe every orafice of your body...they have no personal information to tie it to, so they have no clue who the scans belong to.
Now, if they do require personal information for a cash purchase of one day or one week tickets....that's a different story.
A better design would be to have the top of the case be intake and the bottom of the case exhaust. You could even make it so that the top half or both the left and right sides intake with the bottom half of both sides exhaust. This would provide "clean" air from above, and blow all the potato chips and dust bunnies across the floor. Of course "clean" is a relative term.
Really?
;-)
So, either he hacked the world's biggest computer or
he weighs 900 pounds.
Which is it?
Personally I am hoping the its the latter one...it would be pretty funny to see him mashing the keyboard with his hand because his fingers are too fat for the keys. Of course he could order a "dialing stick" (ala Simpsons) to type with.
Install a PGP client on your office computer. Get a friend to do the same and share your public keys.
Encrypt a few messages and send them back and forth using your company e-mail.
Watch them squeel when they can't read your e-mail.
What's that they fired you? For what? Because they couldn't read your e-mail?
Take them to court and sue the bastards for wrongful dismissal. They would have to prove that you leaked company information...if that was their basis for firing you.
If you think about it, this really is a smart move on the part of Apple. Now, they will port the Mac OS to Intel. This means that it just opened up a previously closed market for their OS.
This means that people can now select whatever hardware they want, and have a choice to run Mac OS on it...that is if the hardware is supported/compatible. This is a good thing...this is not a bad thing. This means that the Mac OS now has the potential to switch from being a niche market OS to a main stream, viable alternative to Microsoft Windows, OS. Yes, I know there are those zealots out there that would say that it already is a mainstream OS, but the Mac OS doesn't have anywhere near the market penetration that Windows does.
The only down side is the fact that currently there are few viruses/exploits for the Mac OS because it wasn't popular enough for "hackers" to bother exploiting. Hopefully Apple will take this into consideration and build better security and support into their OS....security and support that Microsoft has been promising us lately but has yet to deliver.
I honestly don't think many people are understanding this whole thing. PMUse got it...and I will add a little extra in hopes the rest of you understand too.
Read this passage, copied directly from the article
Unfortunately, if an over-zealous special agent on a fishing expedition wants to know who checked out Anti-Flag's album The Terror State yesterday, the librarian will probably have little choice. Under the USA PATRIOT Act, he or she would have to surrender the personal identity information that was originally collected to protect the library's materials.
Ok? Now...go back a read it again.
The fundamental problem here is not the libraries, and not the patrons of the libraries. The fundamental problem is that rights an freedoms are being abused and stripped away. Why should you have to even worry about whether or not your "reading history" at your local library will be investigated? What kind of a country do you live in where this would even have to be taken into consideration? Is this the former Soviet Union? Or is this the United States of America?
People will just think that they paid $15 for a book and will keep it. The libraries won't have any books left.
Want to buy a book? Go to a bookstore.
Want to borrow a book? Provide identification, get a borrows card, and check out a book from your library.
Don't want to share your personal information in order to borrow a book? Too bad. Don't like it? Fine, go here
daVinci1980
3. Don't bullshit me about your graphics
We wouldn't have to, except that by the logic in argument 2 this seems to be the #1 thing that people care about. You vote with your dollars. Your mouth is saying "graphics don't matter" but your wallet says "grapihcs are all that I care about. Shit in the box as long as the graphics are top notch." Doom 3, Unreal 3, Half-life 2... All top sellers because of their stellar unrelated gameplay?
Reread the article. You are missing the author's point. He is not arguing on this point that there should be more to a game than top-notch graphics. He's arguing that game publishers/developers should stop showing us consumers just the cut scene graphics and telling us this is what the game looks. If its a cut scene graphic, tell us its a cut scene graphic and then show us actually game-play graphics as well. I have lost count the number of times I have been severely disappointed by a game because all the box had (or even magazine advertisement) was the cut scene graphics. Then when I load it, I find that the actual game-play graphics (you know those graphics that I will be staring at for 99.9% of the time I am playing the game) look like they were drawn by a bunch of retarded monkeys. Its 2005 for crying out loud. Make the actual game graphics look like the cut scene graphics!!!
Anyone living within the borders of the United States of America, now lives within a Police State.
Try and deny it, you can't.
This is not flame bait it is the truth.
If you think this is flame bait,then you are trying to deny the truth....open your eyes and look around.
You're rights are being crushed, violated, and stripped away more and more. Why can't you see this? Why do you consider this acceptable?
Stop being sheep....fight back!!!
God, who cares. Everyone has their personal preferences. Windows has flaws, Linux has flaws, Mac OS has flaws, nothing is perfect. I work exclusively in Solaris for my job, because that's what I do...and it too has flaws. I have a Windows box at home to play games on because so far none of the alternatives can offer every game I want to play. I'm really getting sick of this whole, "My platform is better than yours." crap.
You don't like something? Then don't use it. But shut up with the whole "hitting everyone else over the head with it" attitude.
As much as I despise Paul Martin, Ujjal Dosanjh, and Belinda Stronach, the regressive conservatives are even worse.
What this country really needs is an NDP government with a slight minority, supported issue-by-issue by former backbench Liberals and BQ members.
WHAT???
After what the provincial NDP did to Ontario, you think they should get a chance at federal power? No bloody way!
But, whenever I try to use bittorrent it is more like bitdribble...not a torrent at all and I have a broadband connection.
That would be great....batteries that last a long time. Too bad they have already ruined the product's chances by using the word nuclear.
No matter how hard they try, how well they advertise, or how many safety studies they publish, the common, ignorant, consumer will completely avoid this product and most likely hold demonstrations banning its use and its production. All it will take is one hysterical comment like "...but its nuclear so that means that your laptop will explode and blow up half a city.." or better yet "...nuclear powered devices are just giving more potential weapons to terrorists..."
"This is great. This is our job," said Stephen Robinson, an STS-114 mission specialist. "And people are discovering things."
Yeah, but nobody is repairing what you find!!
The American government stole ("nationalized") the property of a lot of British citizens (United Empire Loyalists) who then fled to Canada. Many of their decendants have legitimate claims on large tracts of land in your country (including much of Manhatten).