I always wanted a light bulb that I couldn't turn off. I suppose I could just remove the switch and connect the wires, but this solution is so much simpler.
I don't care who can find out what I am doing, if I can find out who is checking and for what purpose.
In a completely open world, it shouldn't matter if you have my bank account and credit card numbers, because enough information should be available to verify that it really is me who is authorizing their use. The government may be able to track my movements and activities, but I should be able to track theirs, too.
Sadly, all those people who value their supposed privacy maintain the status quo where only the government and the big corporations have the means to gather our data while most people have relatively little ability to see who is doing what with it or to research the people who are gathering and using our data.
Furthermore, just because the information may be free, that doesn't mean you can make whatever use of it you want to. For example, just because you can get my phone number doesn't mean I want you calling me to sell me something. Currently, people pay extra to keep their numbers private primarily because they are afraid other people with abuse that piece of information, and they are right! If we could stop the abuse, there would be no need for the secrecy.
At the discount price, this is roughly $7 a book. While I may not be able to get them all at once, I sure can get them a lot cheaper other ways. That is the price of new books by well-known authors, and I have a very hard time bringing myself to pay that (I can't help but think of scrimping to save $1.50 to go buy a brand new book each week just 15 years ago). I can't imagine paying those prices for these "classics". No wonder the shipping is so cheap.
I use RAID1 because I'm much more concerned about loss of data than about performance. Yeah, that means I buy two drives for the space of one, but for my personal data, it's worth it.
Really, if you need that much storage, I would hope your hardware budget is a little bigger than what I allocate for my stuff at home.
Wow. Yours is a lot more hassle for getting a replacement, but probably cuts down on fraud significantly as long as you remember to file a change of address whenever you move. If you forget, the new person living at your old address gets the reminder notice...
However, out of all the documents you listed, only the passport and out of state license have anything to identify you as really being you (photo and other physical characteristics). Even the signature is worthless unless they have your signature on file to compare it with.
In Oklahoma, to replace a stolen license, I visited the deppartment of vital records (fortunately I was living near there at the time) to get a certified copy of my birth certificate, then went to the DMV and walked out with a new license.
When I moved to Texas, I had to turn in my old license (and showed my birth certificate and a utility bill) and walked out with a paper non-photo license. For the next three weeks, until my new license arrived in the mail, I could not buy alcohol at a store, restaurant, or bar. I probably could not have bought cigarettes, but since I don't smoke I didn't try. Now that was a real pain, and I still have no idea why it takes so long (they said 2-4 weeks).
When I moved to North Carolina, I turned in my old license (and showed my birth certificate and a utility bill) and walked out with a new license.
To get a utility bill, establish service and tell them a name. They don't verify it.
Notice how all of this stemmed from obtaining a certified copy of a birth certificate? The whole chain of identification depends on that birth certificate which has almost no useful identifying information and can be obtained by anyone.
Once you have enough info about someone to obtain a copy of their birth certificate, you've got them. Knowing their social security number is a bonus and can help speed some things along.
When my wallet was stolen once, I was amazed at how easy it was to quickly replace everything once I had my birth certificate. I'm not surprised that identity theft is such a problem.
We have State IDs and we have State drivers' licenses. You had to verify your identity to get those sorts of things.
Have you ever had to do this?
Original license/ID
I had to present my birth certificate when I took my driving test. My birth certificate had absolutely nothing on it to physically identify me except my race and gender. That limits me to any of a few million people.
Lost/stolen license
I had to obtain a copy of my birth certificate by signing a paper that said I am me or a close relative or someone else with a legitimate interest in my birth certificate and handing over $5. I had to present that copy to the DMV who promptly issued me a replacement license.
Change of state
I had to present my old license along with some proof of residency (a utility bill with my name and address on it).
So, where in all of that is there any conclusive proof that I am me? At what point would it be obvious that someone else is not me?
The really weird thing is that I had to have a photo ID to apply for a replacement social security card which contains only my name and social security number.
Who needs bnetd for LAN support? We needed it for internet support. One player in North Carolina, two in Texas, two in Utah, and one in California are a little far apart for a LAN.
You're right. As far as I could determine, bnetd was started because battle.net was designed or administered by incompetent people, and the authors of bnetd wanted a usable way to play the game they purchased.
I was using bnetd long before Warcraft III beta existed. I started using it because my friends and I got tired of spending hours trying to all get in the same game to play together. With bnetd, that changed to about 5 minutes.
There are two reasons why bnetd does not check for a valid CD key: (1) it's open source, and the check would be easy to disable, and (2) Blizzard would not provide the algotithm or any other method to check if a key was valid. Although it makes sense for Blizzard to not provide the algorithms, their refusal to provide any method to check leaves bnetd with no possibility of checking.
Bnetd was built around running legitimate copies of the games. Just because it was not possible for bnetd to check for a valid key does not mean that it was designed to allow invalid keys. That was a side issue irrelevant to the intent of bnetd.
No, NAT wasn't the problem. Some of us were NATted, others weren't. There seemed to be no correlation between problems and NAT users. The problem was system load on Battle.Net. From about 5pm Friday through Sunday afternoon, it was close to impossible for us to play together. If we all happened to have an evening free during the week, it was great. However, Friday nights were the best time for us to play, except that Battle.Net was unusuable then.
Bnetd made all the difference. Even though I was one of the ones behind NAT, and so was my bnetd server, none of us had trouble connecting or playing.
When Blizzard added zones to Battle.Net, that made a huge difference (as long as we all remembered to pick the same zone).
...the only practical purpose of the whole bnetd thing was to allow people to play pirated copies of Blizzard games online. Blizzard's own battle.net system has always seemed a good system to me; it's fast, it's free...
You're kidding, right? Actually, that may be true now, but it wasn't true a few years ago. A few friends and I regularly played Starcraft. We were connected on a voice chat program. We were all logged into Battle.Net. We were all using a specific private chat channel in Battle.Net. Although we could talk to each other over voice chat, it regularly took over an hour of fiddling around, logging off and back on, before we were all visible to each other in Battle.Net's chat. Trying to all get into the same game often took another hour as we took turns setting up the game as somebody (different each time) couldn't join the game or got booted immediately when the game started.
I finally stumbled onto bnetd and set it up on my linux box at home. After that, we had NO troubles jumping on and playing. Then the only time we had trouble was if someone had played on Battle.Net during the week and a patch had come out. Then I would spend about half an hour to download and install an updated bnetd, and we'd be playing again.
There was no piracy involved. We all had legitimate copies of the game. However, Battle.Net was horrible. The only way to overcome Blizzard's incompetence was to use bnetd.
I am not in "Dial-Up" space. I am in "always connected" cable modem space where my address changes very rarely.
Your ISP sucks because they haven't started filtering port 25 traffic
I picked my ISP because they do NOT filter traffic without a good reason to filter it (such as verified reports that I am sending spam).
It sucks if you're doing something legitimate, but until your ISP controls their idiot users, it must be done
Yes it sucks, but "it must be done" is wrong. I am doing something legitimate. I run my own mail server. I do this for multiple reasons (in order of importance):
Previous ISPs have had very unreliable mail servers (I don't know about Earthlink's); I know how reliable mine is and have logs I can check if/when something goes wrong.
I get tired of identifying and notifying everyone when my email address changes when my ISP gets bought out or goes under or I move.
I have my own web-based mail client (from www.horde.org)
to use, so I can access my mail from anywhere and on any platform with a web browser that supports SSL instead of needing to install or configure a custom client whereever I go.
for the experience
because I can
DUL makes sense for dial-up connections where the address changes every few hours because you have to dial in again. It does not make sense for "always on" connections like mine where the address has not changed in almost three years (December 2002 when an ice storm killed power for 10 days; the last change before that was when I relocated to a new state).
I have never received any reports about spam coming from my server, either directly or relayed. I have never found my address listed by any of the blacklist sites except the DUL.
Although I have done nothing wrong, I have been blacklisted because my ISP truthfully reports that I have a dynamic IP address served by DHCP. No consideration is given by the blacklist maintainers that my address has not changed in years, that my server is secured against relaying, that I have done nothing to earn being blacklisted. In fact, there is no way for me to get off of the DUL. At least with the other blacklists, there are ways I can attempt to prove my innocence of charges.
The DUL is another very annoying list. Earthlink reports all of its cable modem customers to DUL because we are forced to use "dynamic" addresses with DHCP. My address is so dynamic it has changed once since I because a customer, and that change occurred three years ago.
For DSL customers, Earthlink offers a special service: a static IP address for only $15/month extra. Cable subscribers don't get that option. I really have to wonder how that static address could possibly cost them any more to maintain than my current dynamic address. In my case, the only difference it would make is whether I am on the DUL or not. (I use dyndns.org to have a dynamic domain point to me and now have a regular paid-for domain pointing directly to my IP address which I will manually update should my address ever change again.)
www.horde.org
See the kronolith project
It's what I use for web-based email, calendar, address book, and more on my home server, and is available anywhere I have access to a web browser.
My idea of using homework is to assign it, provide answers, review it in class. However, you never let it have anything to do with your grade.
One of my teachers had a great solution for this. Homework never counted towards a grade and was not checked. All the answers were in the book anyway, but not the steps to reach the answer (other than the general steps in the lessons). Homework solutions were discussed in class after it was turned in.
The catch was that if you did your homework and turned it in on time and did poorly on a test, then you could request that the teacher check your homework and he would give some extra credit if the homework was done correctly.
This gave everyone who needed to do the homework the incentive to do it, and did not penalize the people who did not need to do it.
The funny thing is this was my calculus class and was the first math/science class where I actually felt a need to do the homework to be able to do well on the tests (not for the extra credit but for the practice).
I knew the topics, I tested excellent, so I suppose I "got away" with it. I got to college and was screwed, because I adopted a policy of not needing to study or do homework.
Likewise for me, except my first year of college was basically a repeat of my senior year of high school, so it was my second year of college when I suddenly discovered a need for study and homework outside of class, and I did not have the skills or habits for doing that.
Just giving homework does not teach good study habits, especially for people who learn the subject easily and have no need to do the homework.
That doesn't make any sense. Try "never have been". Or, if you are basing this on what you hear said, try "never 'ave been" or maybe even "never've been".
We used to have that. The TV stations used to add them in, often with cute or annoying jingles with messages to the effect of "we'll be right back after these messages" and "we're back". I don't know how long it has been since the stations quit doing that, but I'll guess at least ten years.
They can't do that now; it would make skipping commercials that much easier.
My current TV is over 20 years old now and is still working fine. I have no plans to replace it until it breaks. What's the deal with your two-year cutoff; are new TVs that unreliable?
Of course, I don't much care. I use my TV mainly for watching DVDs. I used to use it for watching video tapes, but my three year old VCR quit working a year ago, and I haven't bothered to replace it. My two year old DVD player is starting to act up, though, so I expect I'll be replacing it sometime within the next few months.
Well, I guess I answered my own question about your two year limit for modern technology.
What I fail to understand is why Blizzard takes down ALL the servers and upgrades them all at once. Why don't they take down a few, upgrade them, and see how they do, then proceed with another few until they are all done? If problems develop, they can stop upgrading until they figure out and fix what is wrong.
This would mean that the upgraded game client would have to be able to connect to both the new and previous server version (in case someone has characters on upgraded and non-upgraded realms). That would mean a little extra effort from their programmers, but it would allow people to play on non-upgraded realms while the problems with the upgraded ones are being fixed.
It may make Blizzard's overall upgrade time longer, but it would significantly decrease player (customer) downtimes during it.
I work in IT, and I can not imagine even thinking about rolling out an upgrade across all of my production systems all at once unless it was an emergency fix for a serious problem I am experiencing right then.
No taxes were charged here. We just ordered the cones and handed over the coupons. The guy never even touched the register. He just placed the coupon on the stack on the back counter.
That was yummy. My entire family got free ice cream today. While we were there, everyone who came in handed over coupons. Not even one person pulled out their wallet or purse.
That's odd. The EULA that came with my copy of the software starts off with "YOU SHOULD CAREFULLY READ THE FOLLOWING END USER LICENSE AGREEMENT BEFORE INSTALLING THIS SOFTWARE PROGRAM. BY INSTALLING, COPYING, OR OTHERWISE USING THE SOFTWARE PROGRAM, YOU AGREE TO BE BOUND BY THE TERMS OF THIS AGREEMENT."
Are you sure you're not talking about the "Terms of Use" instead?
Of course, as I just received my key yesterday (see parent of the post to which you responded), I haven't yet had opportunity to find out for myself.
As the article says, it pays to read the EULA.
I may not have received big bucks, but at least
I managed to receive what the EULA said I should
despite the company's refusal to honor it.
A few days ago I submitted a
story
about Blizzard not honoring their EULA in full. After much arguing with Blizzard's support staff, I have heard from them today:
We have been investigating the issues you have raised in connection with
our EULA and our Terms of Use. Our legal team is currently in the
process of revising our documentation to make the permissions and
restrictions more clear for situations such as yours.
In the meantime, we will provide you with a new standard-edition
Authentication Key for World of Warcraft. Please use this key to create
a new account for yourself:
[key deleted]
Please note that the account associated with the old key that you have
will be permanently disabled and rendered unplayable, in order to
facilitate the creation of a new account.
If you are interested in purchasing additional copies of World of
Warcraft, we strongly recommend that you not acquire used or opened
copies, since similar circumstances may similarly delay or prevent your
ability to enjoy the product.
The really funny part is that they have never asked for the old key, yet somehow they have disabled it. I can't check, because it never worked for me.
In the case we where discussing here, people should not be mad at Blizzard (who I personally find to be a dispicable company) because they bought a useless box full of useless disks from someone they can not get their money back from. Blizzards EULAs are freely available on the web, and if you can't understand the full potential ramifications of the agreement you might not want to buy the product.
The EULA that is on the web may or may not be what is in the box. I can not know that until I buy and open the box. Whether it is the same or different, the EULA that is in the box is the one that governs that transaction.
I have read the EULA and understand it ramifications. It expressly allows the sale of the game by one person to another. Blizzard is not abiding by that contract (a EULA is a one-sided contract with questionable validity, but until proven invalid it is still a contract).
I have performed every requirement imposed by the EULA. As far as I am able to determine, the seller has, too. Blizard refuses to abide by the EULA. Blizzard wrote the contract; Blizzard should be able to abide by its terms.
As for some of your other comments...
...most car sellers are pushing leases instead of purchase...they are doing it so that you gain no benifit from resale.
No, they are doing it because it means more profit for them. The fact that we no longer gain a benefit from resale is irrelevant to them.
...unlike a book, a car is not a one time use product and the user of the vehicle will hopefully keep the experience in mind when purchasing their next car.
A book is a one-time-use product? I don't know where you get your books, but the ones I buy can be read over and over again, just like a car can be driven over and over again. When shopping for new (or used) books, which I do far more often than for a car, I keep in mind the experience I had reading the books I own or have borrowed. If I like that author, I am very likely to select another book by that author, and it doesn't matter if the books I had read before were bought new or used or borrowed.
It is most certainly the producers right to determine what can and can not be done with their products.
No, it is not. Copyrights and patents grant the producer specific and limited rights to determine what can and can not be done with their products. The entire concept of the first sale doctrine came about because book publishers were trying to do exactly what Blizzard is attempting now: prevent re-sale of the product. Except, Blizard's own EULA specifically allows it.
Slashdot Mirror
at least, those of us who saw the original broadcasts
I always wanted a light bulb that I couldn't turn off. I suppose I could just remove the switch and connect the wires, but this solution is so much simpler.
In a completely open world, it shouldn't matter if you have my bank account and credit card numbers, because enough information should be available to verify that it really is me who is authorizing their use. The government may be able to track my movements and activities, but I should be able to track theirs, too.
Sadly, all those people who value their supposed privacy maintain the status quo where only the government and the big corporations have the means to gather our data while most people have relatively little ability to see who is doing what with it or to research the people who are gathering and using our data.
Furthermore, just because the information may be free, that doesn't mean you can make whatever use of it you want to. For example, just because you can get my phone number doesn't mean I want you calling me to sell me something. Currently, people pay extra to keep their numbers private primarily because they are afraid other people with abuse that piece of information, and they are right! If we could stop the abuse, there would be no need for the secrecy.
At the discount price, this is roughly $7 a book. While I may not be able to get them all at once, I sure can get them a lot cheaper other ways. That is the price of new books by well-known authors, and I have a very hard time bringing myself to pay that (I can't help but think of scrimping to save $1.50 to go buy a brand new book each week just 15 years ago). I can't imagine paying those prices for these "classics". No wonder the shipping is so cheap.
Really, if you need that much storage, I would hope your hardware budget is a little bigger than what I allocate for my stuff at home.
However, out of all the documents you listed, only the passport and out of state license have anything to identify you as really being you (photo and other physical characteristics). Even the signature is worthless unless they have your signature on file to compare it with.
In Oklahoma, to replace a stolen license, I visited the deppartment of vital records (fortunately I was living near there at the time) to get a certified copy of my birth certificate, then went to the DMV and walked out with a new license.
When I moved to Texas, I had to turn in my old license (and showed my birth certificate and a utility bill) and walked out with a paper non-photo license. For the next three weeks, until my new license arrived in the mail, I could not buy alcohol at a store, restaurant, or bar. I probably could not have bought cigarettes, but since I don't smoke I didn't try. Now that was a real pain, and I still have no idea why it takes so long (they said 2-4 weeks).
When I moved to North Carolina, I turned in my old license (and showed my birth certificate and a utility bill) and walked out with a new license.
To get a utility bill, establish service and tell them a name. They don't verify it.
Notice how all of this stemmed from obtaining a certified copy of a birth certificate? The whole chain of identification depends on that birth certificate which has almost no useful identifying information and can be obtained by anyone.
Once you have enough info about someone to obtain a copy of their birth certificate, you've got them. Knowing their social security number is a bonus and can help speed some things along.
When my wallet was stolen once, I was amazed at how easy it was to quickly replace everything once I had my birth certificate. I'm not surprised that identity theft is such a problem.
Have you ever had to do this?
Original license/ID
I had to present my birth certificate when I took my driving test. My birth certificate had absolutely nothing on it to physically identify me except my race and gender. That limits me to any of a few million people.
Lost/stolen license
I had to obtain a copy of my birth certificate by signing a paper that said I am me or a close relative or someone else with a legitimate interest in my birth certificate and handing over $5. I had to present that copy to the DMV who promptly issued me a replacement license.
Change of state
I had to present my old license along with some proof of residency (a utility bill with my name and address on it).
So, where in all of that is there any conclusive proof that I am me? At what point would it be obvious that someone else is not me?
The really weird thing is that I had to have a photo ID to apply for a replacement social security card which contains only my name and social security number.
Who needs bnetd for LAN support? We needed it for internet support. One player in North Carolina, two in Texas, two in Utah, and one in California are a little far apart for a LAN.
You're right. As far as I could determine, bnetd was started because battle.net was designed or administered by incompetent people, and the authors of bnetd wanted a usable way to play the game they purchased.
I was using bnetd long before Warcraft III beta existed. I started using it because my friends and I got tired of spending hours trying to all get in the same game to play together. With bnetd, that changed to about 5 minutes.
There are two reasons why bnetd does not check for a valid CD key: (1) it's open source, and the check would be easy to disable, and (2) Blizzard would not provide the algotithm or any other method to check if a key was valid. Although it makes sense for Blizzard to not provide the algorithms, their refusal to provide any method to check leaves bnetd with no possibility of checking.
Bnetd was built around running legitimate copies of the games. Just because it was not possible for bnetd to check for a valid key does not mean that it was designed to allow invalid keys. That was a side issue irrelevant to the intent of bnetd.
Bnetd made all the difference. Even though I was one of the ones behind NAT, and so was my bnetd server, none of us had trouble connecting or playing.
When Blizzard added zones to Battle.Net, that made a huge difference (as long as we all remembered to pick the same zone).
You're kidding, right? Actually, that may be true now, but it wasn't true a few years ago. A few friends and I regularly played Starcraft. We were connected on a voice chat program. We were all logged into Battle.Net. We were all using a specific private chat channel in Battle.Net. Although we could talk to each other over voice chat, it regularly took over an hour of fiddling around, logging off and back on, before we were all visible to each other in Battle.Net's chat. Trying to all get into the same game often took another hour as we took turns setting up the game as somebody (different each time) couldn't join the game or got booted immediately when the game started.
I finally stumbled onto bnetd and set it up on my linux box at home. After that, we had NO troubles jumping on and playing. Then the only time we had trouble was if someone had played on Battle.Net during the week and a patch had come out. Then I would spend about half an hour to download and install an updated bnetd, and we'd be playing again.
There was no piracy involved. We all had legitimate copies of the game. However, Battle.Net was horrible. The only way to overcome Blizzard's incompetence was to use bnetd.
I am not in "Dial-Up" space. I am in "always connected" cable modem space where my address changes very rarely.
Your ISP sucks because they haven't started filtering port 25 traffic
I picked my ISP because they do NOT filter traffic without a good reason to filter it (such as verified reports that I am sending spam).
It sucks if you're doing something legitimate, but until your ISP controls their idiot users, it must be done
Yes it sucks, but "it must be done" is wrong. I am doing something legitimate. I run my own mail server. I do this for multiple reasons (in order of importance):
DUL makes sense for dial-up connections where the address changes every few hours because you have to dial in again. It does not make sense for "always on" connections like mine where the address has not changed in almost three years (December 2002 when an ice storm killed power for 10 days; the last change before that was when I relocated to a new state).
I have never received any reports about spam coming from my server, either directly or relayed. I have never found my address listed by any of the blacklist sites except the DUL.
Although I have done nothing wrong, I have been blacklisted because my ISP truthfully reports that I have a dynamic IP address served by DHCP. No consideration is given by the blacklist maintainers that my address has not changed in years, that my server is secured against relaying, that I have done nothing to earn being blacklisted. In fact, there is no way for me to get off of the DUL. At least with the other blacklists, there are ways I can attempt to prove my innocence of charges.
The DUL is another very annoying list. Earthlink reports all of its cable modem customers to DUL because we are forced to use "dynamic" addresses with DHCP. My address is so dynamic it has changed once since I because a customer, and that change occurred three years ago. For DSL customers, Earthlink offers a special service: a static IP address for only $15/month extra. Cable subscribers don't get that option. I really have to wonder how that static address could possibly cost them any more to maintain than my current dynamic address. In my case, the only difference it would make is whether I am on the DUL or not. (I use dyndns.org to have a dynamic domain point to me and now have a regular paid-for domain pointing directly to my IP address which I will manually update should my address ever change again.)
www.horde.org See the kronolith project It's what I use for web-based email, calendar, address book, and more on my home server, and is available anywhere I have access to a web browser.
Who cares about the end of the universe? Fast forward it to 2006 so I can make plans for next year.
One of my teachers had a great solution for this. Homework never counted towards a grade and was not checked. All the answers were in the book anyway, but not the steps to reach the answer (other than the general steps in the lessons). Homework solutions were discussed in class after it was turned in.
The catch was that if you did your homework and turned it in on time and did poorly on a test, then you could request that the teacher check your homework and he would give some extra credit if the homework was done correctly.
This gave everyone who needed to do the homework the incentive to do it, and did not penalize the people who did not need to do it.
The funny thing is this was my calculus class and was the first math/science class where I actually felt a need to do the homework to be able to do well on the tests (not for the extra credit but for the practice).
I knew the topics, I tested excellent, so I suppose I "got away" with it. I got to college and was screwed, because I adopted a policy of not needing to study or do homework.
Likewise for me, except my first year of college was basically a repeat of my senior year of high school, so it was my second year of college when I suddenly discovered a need for study and homework outside of class, and I did not have the skills or habits for doing that.
Just giving homework does not teach good study habits, especially for people who learn the subject easily and have no need to do the homework.
That doesn't make any sense. Try "never have been". Or, if you are basing this on what you hear said, try "never 'ave been" or maybe even "never've been".
They can't do that now; it would make skipping commercials that much easier.
Of course, I don't much care. I use my TV mainly for watching DVDs. I used to use it for watching video tapes, but my three year old VCR quit working a year ago, and I haven't bothered to replace it. My two year old DVD player is starting to act up, though, so I expect I'll be replacing it sometime within the next few months.
Well, I guess I answered my own question about your two year limit for modern technology.
This would mean that the upgraded game client would have to be able to connect to both the new and previous server version (in case someone has characters on upgraded and non-upgraded realms). That would mean a little extra effort from their programmers, but it would allow people to play on non-upgraded realms while the problems with the upgraded ones are being fixed.
It may make Blizzard's overall upgrade time longer, but it would significantly decrease player (customer) downtimes during it.
I work in IT, and I can not imagine even thinking about rolling out an upgrade across all of my production systems all at once unless it was an emergency fix for a serious problem I am experiencing right then.
No taxes were charged here. We just ordered the cones and handed over the coupons. The guy never even touched the register. He just placed the coupon on the stack on the back counter.
That was yummy. My entire family got free ice cream today. While we were there, everyone who came in handed over coupons. Not even one person pulled out their wallet or purse.
Are you sure you're not talking about the "Terms of Use" instead?
Of course, as I just received my key yesterday (see parent of the post to which you responded), I haven't yet had opportunity to find out for myself.
A few days ago I submitted a story about Blizzard not honoring their EULA in full. After much arguing with Blizzard's support staff, I have heard from them today:
The really funny part is that they have never asked for the old key, yet somehow they have disabled it. I can't check, because it never worked for me.
The EULA that is on the web may or may not be what is in the box. I can not know that until I buy and open the box. Whether it is the same or different, the EULA that is in the box is the one that governs that transaction.
I have read the EULA and understand it ramifications. It expressly allows the sale of the game by one person to another. Blizzard is not abiding by that contract (a EULA is a one-sided contract with questionable validity, but until proven invalid it is still a contract).
I have performed every requirement imposed by the EULA. As far as I am able to determine, the seller has, too. Blizard refuses to abide by the EULA. Blizzard wrote the contract; Blizzard should be able to abide by its terms.
As for some of your other comments...
No, they are doing it because it means more profit for them. The fact that we no longer gain a benefit from resale is irrelevant to them.
A book is a one-time-use product? I don't know where you get your books, but the ones I buy can be read over and over again, just like a car can be driven over and over again. When shopping for new (or used) books, which I do far more often than for a car, I keep in mind the experience I had reading the books I own or have borrowed. If I like that author, I am very likely to select another book by that author, and it doesn't matter if the books I had read before were bought new or used or borrowed.
It is most certainly the producers right to determine what can and can not be done with their products. No, it is not. Copyrights and patents grant the producer specific and limited rights to determine what can and can not be done with their products. The entire concept of the first sale doctrine came about because book publishers were trying to do exactly what Blizzard is attempting now: prevent re-sale of the product. Except, Blizard's own EULA specifically allows it.