That's not how it works. You are not supposed to do any research yourself. You are supposed to decide based on the research done by the prosecution/defense, and not look up stuff on wikipedia or other websites.
Isn't it fantastic to have a jury decide over somebody's fate when that jury consists of people playing Farmville while not paying any attention to what's going on during the trial.
He also copied the maze (original (scroll down) and copy). It's not an exact pixel-for-pixel copy, but it's pretty darn close.
I'd be willing to bet that the OP's under the misconception that only mechanical copies count as copies.
Yes, it is the same dungeon layout. Even the powerup pills are located in pretty much the same place. Plus the tunnel to move from one side of the screen to the other and the "ghost house" in the center. Seriously, it is just a clone, except for the colour of the walls (brown vs. blue). I do not think there's much to complain here about the DMCA notice.
Absolute fucking cobblers. In nearly every city in Britain and probably America you will find a Mandir and every one will have swastikas. There have been 3,000 people at ours at Deepawali and other similar occasions (not your group of 20), and nobody is shocked, or wants to shock people. Your assertion that a handfull of people want to use the swastika to shock people is absolute crap, a large number of people use it regularly as a religious symbol.
That may be, but we are talking about an ONLINE SHOOTER here. The only reason anybody would want to use a swastika in a xbox live shooter (with mostly male teenage players) is not religion, it's the link to nazi Germany.
None of the articles seem to mention that the swastika is banned in Germany. As a result, model aircraft manufacturers (Airfix, Revell, etc) don't include swastikas in their decal sheet so they can sell to the international market.
Exactly, that's another thing which has to be considered here. The xbox live service is available in Germany, too - and so the company could (potentially) get into trouble. Most likely not (the game has already been rated etc. after all), but I am sure it's one of the reasons why game companies make sure those symbols are not used by players.
But people do not have a right to offend others, either, if I create an online game and state in my terms of service "we reserve the right to ban you for offending other players". And that's what's being discussed here.
I 100% agree with everything that guy posted in his blog.
Yes, the swastika symbol does not always stand for nazi Germany, but in our western culture, pretty much EVERYBODY will think of that meaning first - especially if the symbol is drawn in exactly the way used back then (same orientation, same colours). All the "but it has a different meaning in certain religions" arguments are just crap. If you'd ask those people to explain in more detail what they know about the symbol, why it is designed that way and why exactly their 20 people clan so badly wants that symbol as their logo, they would not be able to explain it (or you'd just get a copy of the wikipedia article) - because in reality they actually want the swastika symbol BECAUSE they want to offend people and all the "oh it's a good luck symbol in certain religions" arguments are just bullshit to try and get around the terms of service. Using a swastika as a clan logo in a first person shooter game because it means "luck"? Come on.
So we're back at "is it ok to intentionally do something which offends people in an online game?", and the answer to that is obvious - it depends on the terms of service of that online game, the game company CAN state that they will ban you for it (free speech does not apply there, same as it does not apply on a private message board).
Because of the average US customer. It's not worth it for european car companies to bring the good stuff there, because nobody would buy it. Case in point: the new Volkswagen Jetta sold in the US uses lesser quality interior and different engines than the european one, so that it can be sold at a lower price (i.e. same as Toyota models etc.). Obviously Volkswagen think selling the SAME car as here in Germany, with higher quality components, but at a higher price, would not be worth it because there would not be a market for it. Or look at the "Routan", the US variant of the euro Touran. US version is only available with silly large (3.8l/197hp, 4l/251hp) petrol engines, while here in Germany, they offer the same engines as in the Golf (e.g. the various TSI models like the 1.4l/170hp or the 2l/170hp diesel). And the funny thing is that the 1.4l/170hp TSI engine (which in real life uses like 8l/100km) then even has the same 0-60 time as the 4l/251hp/18mpg US engine...
WoW has so many obvious shortcomings, it's strange other MMOs can't surpass it. It's like other game houses try too much in too few different fronts.
Nonexistent world PvP since Blizzard actively tries to prevent it: sanctuary zones, flying mounts, teleports everywhere.
pansy devs abhor any hardship the supposed war between factions could cause. Which means there's no war in warcraft: villages can't be destroyed nor conquered.
And the lesson we learn from this (and from the subscriber numbers for "real pvp" games like EVE, L2) is: most players do not like unlimited pvp with major consequences. Unrestricted pvp games are niche games. And that's why Blizzard made WoW the way it is - they earn more money this way.
On one of the FF14 player forums, I read that on the Japanese Amazon site, FF14 had about 130 reviews 1-2 days ago, with about 100 of them being "1 star". So I guess the Japanese players are not all that different to western players when it comes to liking FF14 or not.
Re:I finally could tell my friend to go to hell
on
Windows 95 Turns 15
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· Score: 1
True, but I'd like to know how many of those who bought a computer with OS/2 at that time actually kept it on their hard disk. It would not surprise me if after some situations of "oh, so I need Windows to get that software running which I just bought" most of the computers ended up with a pirated copy of Windows courtesy of a colleague/the son of a colleague/etc. OS/2 certainly was not a bad operating system, but it was very hard getting it to work with any kind of hardware which did not have drivers on the OS/2 installation disks. And most games which used DOS extenders etc. were not playable.
He is talking about the SATA cables in a NAS. So the bits which form his audio files first go from the hard disk over the SATA cables in question to the SATA controller on the mainboard of the NAS (of course error checked and everything, so there cannot be any wrong 0's and 1's anywhere or the whole thing would error out), and then via his LAN to his hifi system. So any possible influence the SATA cables could have is lost anyway when the bits finally arrive at his hifi system, because they have gone through so many controllers, caches etc. This guy simply does not understand how things work. Otherwise he would not claim that his super SATA cables "lower the noise floor" of the music - this would either mean that the bits themselves get modified (which they can't be, for obvious reasons), or that the SATA cables in the NAS have an influence on how the DAC in his hifi system works...
I am just surprised that they can get away with advertising a connection as "up to" when the majority of their users NEVER see a speed anywhere near that and the ISP knows that. Car analogy: advertising a car as "max speed up to 250 miles per hour" when it can, due to engine etc., reach a max of 120 miles/hour ("well, our car CAN reach 250 miles/hour, if you strap a rocket to the back of it, but during normal use, you may not reach that speed").
download client. Go play on a private server (after modifying the client so it points to a private server instead of the official ones). Pay nothing to Blizzard. And that's what most likely most private server players do. Why should they pay for the box (which only costs money because it includes one free month of play time), when they can get the client for free.
There is a client people pay for that has all of the content. There's also a client people do not pay for which limits the amount of content they can consume.
No. You can download the FULL, unrestricted client for free. Because that is what you do when you buy the game online without getting the DVD. Why should the client be restricted? The restrictions come from your account. There is an official download page for it, for example here: http://www.wow-europe.com/en/downloads/client/
Just scroll down, click e.g. on the "English - PC" button, and you get the bittorrent downloader for the full client.
That's the way World of Warcraft (and most other MMORPG) work, download the client for free, pay via monthly subscription. If you buy the game box in a shop, you get in addition to the client one month's game time on the official server, that's what you pay for. But you can also just download the client and then register (and pay for) an account on the Blizzard website.
Or you can download the client and pay Blizzard f all, and play on a private server.
Blizzard charge for the client, plus separate subscription fees to hook up to their servers. There is a clear separation of the money you pay for the client, and the money you pay to access Blizzards servers. The client is typically bought or downloaded and therefore once you've bought it you are free to use it as you wish, provided you don't distribute copies.
In theory, there should be nothing unlawful against hooking up to a different server as there is a clear separation here. The protocol can and has been reverse engineered The only question is whether any of Blizzards proprietary data is held on the server and "distributed" to the clients.
Presumably, the in-game items are not transferable from a private server to Blizzards server, so no issues there either.
This judgement was not defended, so the question arises as to whether it would be possible to mount a defence so as to make non-Blizzard servers legitimate?
The client is free, but when you download it, you agree (license agreement) to only use it to connect to official Blizzard servers. So there is no "I paid for it, I can do whatever I want with it".
To be honest, I can't really stand all this "private server operators aren't doing anything wrong!" crap anymore. It's just BS. I can understand it for games like Starcraft 1, Diablo 1 and 2 and others which you buy once and then the connection even to the official servers is free. You are doing Blizzard no harm when you make a server emulator for those (apart from less players on the official servers, which maybe makes them less attractive), and to play on those private servers, you need to have bought the game anyway (or you are using pirated copies, and that's a whole different problem). But for WoW and other games like e.g. Lineage 2, the clients are free and the company makes money via the monthly subscription. It is so blatantly obvious that it CANNOT be OK to provide free servers for those, common sense tells you that, you are hurting the company if people download the FREE clients from the company website and then turn around and play on private servers - maybe even paying the private server admins for in-game stuff. I just want to/facepalm every time I read those "it's not illegal to reverse engineer, blah blah" comments - how can it be ok to act as a direct competition to a company, by offering exactly the product they created and which they are selling? It does not matter if the server code is not exactly the same, if a player can just download the free client which is intended for the official servers, point it to a private server and then play WoW without paying Blizzard, that's just wrong. "Thanks for creating WoW, Blizzard, but we'll play it for free - by the way, when will you give us the next expansion?"
Really? |I'm not sure what the hosting company did wrong.
I can't see what they "copied". They provided an alternative service for people who legitimately bought copies of WoW. Disallowing use of private servers sounds like Microsoft disallowing difference search engines for Internet Explorer.
Nope, they provided a service for everybody, even people who never ever bought WoW. You can download the client from Blizzard's ftp site - what you need to play on Blizzard's servers is an account. So what the hosting company did was allow people to play WoW without ever having paid Blizzard for the game, and they even made money out of it.
Private servers do not NEED you to buy a copy of the game. You can just download the client from the Blizzard website without paying anything (since you are supposed to also buy an account for WoW, and the client is useless without an account) and then use that client to play on a private server. So the "I already paid for the game, I can play on whatever server I want" excuse does not work. I would not be surprised if 99% of the players on the private servers never actually paid for the game. Blizzard has every right in the world to sue private server operators who allow people to play Blizzard's game without paying Blizzard.
I enjoy multiplayer games, but it needs to be a cooperative mode play, i.e. "together against the AI". I tend to play with the same people, my RL friends, and usually we have a few people which are very good at one game, while the others are less awesome. Competitive games tend to be quite boring when you have always the same people winning. A cooperative game on the other hand allows everybody to enjoy the game, because you work together in a team, and it does not really matter that much if one player has more skill than the others. That's why we like games like the Diablo series, the Baldur's Gate series, Command&Conquer, shooters like the old Battlefield ones which allowed you to play cooperatively against a computer-controlled enemy team and so on. But for some reason many game companies think it is totally awesome to publish games in which you can play multiplayer, but only AGAINST each other, and not together against the computer.
Slashdot Mirror
That's not how it works. You are not supposed to do any research yourself. You are supposed to decide based on the research done by the prosecution/defense, and not look up stuff on wikipedia or other websites.
Isn't it fantastic to have a jury decide over somebody's fate when that jury consists of people playing Farmville while not paying any attention to what's going on during the trial.
He also copied the maze (original (scroll down) and copy). It's not an exact pixel-for-pixel copy, but it's pretty darn close.
I'd be willing to bet that the OP's under the misconception that only mechanical copies count as copies.
Yes, it is the same dungeon layout. Even the powerup pills are located in pretty much the same place. Plus the tunnel to move from one side of the screen to the other and the "ghost house" in the center. Seriously, it is just a clone, except for the colour of the walls (brown vs. blue). I do not think there's much to complain here about the DMCA notice.
Absolute fucking cobblers. In nearly every city in Britain and probably America you will find a Mandir and every one will have swastikas. There have been 3,000 people at ours at Deepawali and other similar occasions (not your group of 20), and nobody is shocked, or wants to shock people. Your assertion that a handfull of people want to use the swastika to shock people is absolute crap, a large number of people use it regularly as a religious symbol.
That may be, but we are talking about an ONLINE SHOOTER here. The only reason anybody would want to use a swastika in a xbox live shooter (with mostly male teenage players) is not religion, it's the link to nazi Germany.
None of the articles seem to mention that the swastika is banned in Germany. As a result, model aircraft manufacturers (Airfix, Revell, etc) don't include swastikas in their decal sheet so they can sell to the international market.
Exactly, that's another thing which has to be considered here. The xbox live service is available in Germany, too - and so the company could (potentially) get into trouble. Most likely not (the game has already been rated etc. after all), but I am sure it's one of the reasons why game companies make sure those symbols are not used by players.
But people do not have a right to offend others, either, if I create an online game and state in my terms of service "we reserve the right to ban you for offending other players". And that's what's being discussed here.
I 100% agree with everything that guy posted in his blog.
Yes, the swastika symbol does not always stand for nazi Germany, but in our western culture, pretty much EVERYBODY will think of that meaning first - especially if the symbol is drawn in exactly the way used back then (same orientation, same colours). All the "but it has a different meaning in certain religions" arguments are just crap. If you'd ask those people to explain in more detail what they know about the symbol, why it is designed that way and why exactly their 20 people clan so badly wants that symbol as their logo, they would not be able to explain it (or you'd just get a copy of the wikipedia article) - because in reality they actually want the swastika symbol BECAUSE they want to offend people and all the "oh it's a good luck symbol in certain religions" arguments are just bullshit to try and get around the terms of service. Using a swastika as a clan logo in a first person shooter game because it means "luck"? Come on.
So we're back at "is it ok to intentionally do something which offends people in an online game?", and the answer to that is obvious - it depends on the terms of service of that online game, the game company CAN state that they will ban you for it (free speech does not apply there, same as it does not apply on a private message board).
then you might find these interesting:
http://www.festo.com/cms/en_corp/9772_10378.htm#id_10378
http://www.festo.com/cms/en_corp/9786_10401.htm#id_10401
here you go, movie:
http://www.festo.com/cms/en_corp/11082_11090.htm
In pretty much all countries . even the US - freedom of speech is not absolute. Because there always are dickheads who abuse otherwise good things.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_speech#Limitations_on_freedom_of_speech
Because of the average US customer. It's not worth it for european car companies to bring the good stuff there, because nobody would buy it. Case in point: the new Volkswagen Jetta sold in the US uses lesser quality interior and different engines than the european one, so that it can be sold at a lower price (i.e. same as Toyota models etc.). Obviously Volkswagen think selling the SAME car as here in Germany, with higher quality components, but at a higher price, would not be worth it because there would not be a market for it. Or look at the "Routan", the US variant of the euro Touran. US version is only available with silly large (3.8l/197hp, 4l/251hp) petrol engines, while here in Germany, they offer the same engines as in the Golf (e.g. the various TSI models like the 1.4l/170hp or the 2l/170hp diesel). And the funny thing is that the 1.4l/170hp TSI engine (which in real life uses like 8l/100km) then even has the same 0-60 time as the 4l/251hp/18mpg US engine...
WoW has so many obvious shortcomings, it's strange other MMOs can't surpass it. It's like other game houses try too much in too few different fronts.
Nonexistent world PvP since Blizzard actively tries to prevent it: sanctuary zones, flying mounts, teleports everywhere.
pansy devs abhor any hardship the supposed war between factions could cause. Which means there's no war in warcraft: villages can't be destroyed nor conquered.
And the lesson we learn from this (and from the subscriber numbers for "real pvp" games like EVE, L2) is: most players do not like unlimited pvp with major consequences. Unrestricted pvp games are niche games. And that's why Blizzard made WoW the way it is - they earn more money this way.
On one of the FF14 player forums, I read that on the Japanese Amazon site, FF14 had about 130 reviews 1-2 days ago, with about 100 of them being "1 star". So I guess the Japanese players are not all that different to western players when it comes to liking FF14 or not.
True, but I'd like to know how many of those who bought a computer with OS/2 at that time actually kept it on their hard disk. It would not surprise me if after some situations of "oh, so I need Windows to get that software running which I just bought" most of the computers ended up with a pirated copy of Windows courtesy of a colleague/the son of a colleague/etc. OS/2 certainly was not a bad operating system, but it was very hard getting it to work with any kind of hardware which did not have drivers on the OS/2 installation disks. And most games which used DOS extenders etc. were not playable.
Madness? THIS IS SATA!
Not when the SATA cable/hard disk is in a separate NAS, as in this case.
He is talking about the SATA cables in a NAS. So the bits which form his audio files first go from the hard disk over the SATA cables in question to the SATA controller on the mainboard of the NAS (of course error checked and everything, so there cannot be any wrong 0's and 1's anywhere or the whole thing would error out), and then via his LAN to his hifi system. So any possible influence the SATA cables could have is lost anyway when the bits finally arrive at his hifi system, because they have gone through so many controllers, caches etc. This guy simply does not understand how things work. Otherwise he would not claim that his super SATA cables "lower the noise floor" of the music - this would either mean that the bits themselves get modified (which they can't be, for obvious reasons), or that the SATA cables in the NAS have an influence on how the DAC in his hifi system works...
I am just surprised that they can get away with advertising a connection as "up to" when the majority of their users NEVER see a speed anywhere near that and the ISP knows that. Car analogy: advertising a car as "max speed up to 250 miles per hour" when it can, due to engine etc., reach a max of 120 miles/hour ("well, our car CAN reach 250 miles/hour, if you strap a rocket to the back of it, but during normal use, you may not reach that speed").
but you already bought WoW, you just aren't choosing to keep a subscription to blizzards servers going.
Go here
http://www.wow-europe.com/en/downloads/client/
download client. Go play on a private server (after modifying the client so it points to a private server instead of the official ones). Pay nothing to Blizzard. And that's what most likely most private server players do. Why should they pay for the box (which only costs money because it includes one free month of play time), when they can get the client for free.
There is a client people pay for that has all of the content. There's also a client people do not pay for which limits the amount of content they can consume.
No. You can download the FULL, unrestricted client for free. Because that is what you do when you buy the game online without getting the DVD. Why should the client be restricted? The restrictions come from your account. There is an official download page for it, for example here: http://www.wow-europe.com/en/downloads/client/
Just scroll down, click e.g. on the "English - PC" button, and you get the bittorrent downloader for the full client.
That's the way World of Warcraft (and most other MMORPG) work, download the client for free, pay via monthly subscription. If you buy the game box in a shop, you get in addition to the client one month's game time on the official server, that's what you pay for. But you can also just download the client and then register (and pay for) an account on the Blizzard website.
Or you can download the client and pay Blizzard f all, and play on a private server.
Blizzard charge for the client, plus separate subscription fees to hook up to their servers. There is a clear separation of the money you pay for the client, and the money you pay to access Blizzards servers. The client is typically bought or downloaded and therefore once you've bought it you are free to use it as you wish, provided you don't distribute copies.
In theory, there should be nothing unlawful against hooking up to a different server as there is a clear separation here. The protocol can and has been reverse engineered The only question is whether any of Blizzards proprietary data is held on the server and "distributed" to the clients.
Presumably, the in-game items are not transferable from a private server to Blizzards server, so no issues there either.
This judgement was not defended, so the question arises as to whether it would be possible to mount a defence so as to make non-Blizzard servers legitimate?
The client is free, but when you download it, you agree (license agreement) to only use it to connect to official Blizzard servers. So there is no "I paid for it, I can do whatever I want with it".
To be honest, I can't really stand all this "private server operators aren't doing anything wrong!" crap anymore. It's just BS. I can understand it for games like Starcraft 1, Diablo 1 and 2 and others which you buy once and then the connection even to the official servers is free. You are doing Blizzard no harm when you make a server emulator for those (apart from less players on the official servers, which maybe makes them less attractive), and to play on those private servers, you need to have bought the game anyway (or you are using pirated copies, and that's a whole different problem). But for WoW and other games like e.g. Lineage 2, the clients are free and the company makes money via the monthly subscription. It is so blatantly obvious that it CANNOT be OK to provide free servers for those, common sense tells you that, you are hurting the company if people download the FREE clients from the company website and then turn around and play on private servers - maybe even paying the private server admins for in-game stuff. I just want to /facepalm every time I read those "it's not illegal to reverse engineer, blah blah" comments - how can it be ok to act as a direct competition to a company, by offering exactly the product they created and which they are selling? It does not matter if the server code is not exactly the same, if a player can just download the free client which is intended for the official servers, point it to a private server and then play WoW without paying Blizzard, that's just wrong. "Thanks for creating WoW, Blizzard, but we'll play it for free - by the way, when will you give us the next expansion?"
Really? |I'm not sure what the hosting company did wrong.
I can't see what they "copied". They provided an alternative service for people who legitimately bought copies of WoW. Disallowing use of private servers sounds like Microsoft disallowing difference search engines for Internet Explorer.
Nope, they provided a service for everybody, even people who never ever bought WoW. You can download the client from Blizzard's ftp site - what you need to play on Blizzard's servers is an account. So what the hosting company did was allow people to play WoW without ever having paid Blizzard for the game, and they even made money out of it.
Private servers do not NEED you to buy a copy of the game. You can just download the client from the Blizzard website without paying anything (since you are supposed to also buy an account for WoW, and the client is useless without an account) and then use that client to play on a private server. So the "I already paid for the game, I can play on whatever server I want" excuse does not work. I would not be surprised if 99% of the players on the private servers never actually paid for the game. Blizzard has every right in the world to sue private server operators who allow people to play Blizzard's game without paying Blizzard.
to lure settlers there. not because at anytime it was green and/or warm.
I enjoy multiplayer games, but it needs to be a cooperative mode play, i.e. "together against the AI". I tend to play with the same people, my RL friends, and usually we have a few people which are very good at one game, while the others are less awesome. Competitive games tend to be quite boring when you have always the same people winning. A cooperative game on the other hand allows everybody to enjoy the game, because you work together in a team, and it does not really matter that much if one player has more skill than the others. That's why we like games like the Diablo series, the Baldur's Gate series, Command&Conquer, shooters like the old Battlefield ones which allowed you to play cooperatively against a computer-controlled enemy team and so on. But for some reason many game companies think it is totally awesome to publish games in which you can play multiplayer, but only AGAINST each other, and not together against the computer.