This is part of their RMT mitigation system. Specifically, players can exchange in-game money for extra game play, or can get in-game money by buying people additional game time. The "PLEX" in-game object is how this type of transaction is performed. The plex is tradeable and has an option to extend your account time in its context menu (which consumes the plex).
I suspect that the article is actually blowing out of proportion the MMO currency trading side of things. A quick googling shows that evidently gambling is illegal in china and the government has gone to lengths to crack down on it:
If :
A) MMO currency trading is not a notable contributor to China's GDP
B) Virtual currency makes bypassing gambling restrictions easier
C) China is genuinely interested in curbing gambling It sounds to me like banning on-line currency trading is a no-brainer as it will criminalize the entry point people would use to get around local gambling restrictions. Any problem with MMO currency trading is purely incidental.
And I doubt China cares about the cost the rest of the world pays for [Titansteel Bar]s on the auction house..
Your velocity relative to the old portal's frame of reference becomes the velocity relative to the new portal's frame of reference.
For example, if a person falls straight down into a portal on a platform moving 5 m/s, and the exit portal is on a stationary floor, the person will hurl upward out of the stationary portal with a horizontal component of 5 m/s. Which way the person goes depends on the orientations of the portals. Flip either the exit or entrance portal and you'll go the opposite direction.
WTF is that supposed to mean? Ironic though; when nuclear power was first engineered they said it would make electricity "too cheap to meter".
This is a valid question. Here is my guess (I won't claim to be able to read his mind.)
The idea is the power generation its self is cheap enough to be negligible. So, the only cost is the overhead of delivery. Since the cost of delivery does not change depending on how much power being used at a given moment, the end user would only have to pay a fixed rate for maintenance. A meter to measure the amount used would have a higher maintenance overhead than the profit from the electricity used, so it would be a waste to bother using one; Therefore "too cheap to meter"
To connect that back to the original idea, I think he is saying that we should offer a fixed rate for access to any song in a pool because the overhead for charging for each song individually is actually more wasteful.
"Rather than grammarians getting in a huff about "argument" being spelled "arguement" or "opportunity" as "opertunity," why not accept anything that's phonetically (fonetickly anyone?) correct as long as it can be understood?... University teachers should simply accept as variant spelling those words our students most commonly misspell.",
(emphisis added)
So, the sugestion is to only alow "comon" speling mistakes that make fonetik sence. So, a mispeling of a homonim that does not reflekt the corekt sound would not be alowed. For exampel, "tots" as used wod not be alowed as it doesnot reflekt the 'th' sound in the spokan word.
This could eventualy result in homonims being spelt the same way as nonfonetic spellings would fall into disuse. I'm not convinsed of a necesity for words with difrent meanings but the same sound to be speled difrent; This is not an ideografic langwij after all.
Isn't it going to be a little unrealistic to have a million starships going around? Besides, what do you have to work up to? Admiral, then the game gets REALLY boring. You just sit behind a desk.
Well consider the alternative: Starting as a Redshirt. You would die over and over again and accomplish little more than taking hit for those higher ranking than you. At some point you might be able to grind up enough gear and rank to do some damage, but until then your stuck hoping to wast their ammo enough to provide your team an advantage.
Wait, I just described endgame PvP for most MMOs. Ouch.
The NPC mission system is fairly casual and widely available, just not what some would consider "end game" (which is ok if you only play casually - it will take a year to outgrow the npc missions).
I know a few ways to play eve in only a few hours a day that involve market manipulation or manufacturing. It's rather complicated and not available right off the bat to most players.
Eve is a game that has fun in it, but the fun does not present its self as a bright yellow "!". It takes some discerning - but some people consider discerning fun:)
The Court accordingly will grant summary judgment in favor of Blizzard with respect to liability on the contributory and vicarious copyright infringement claims in Counts II and III.
(emphasis added)
Not contributory means "helped them do it." So they are liable because they helped people violate copyright law, according to the ruling.
Thank you for the links. Please correct me if my understanding of the situation is faulty:)
So Blizzard says that, basically, ownership does not apply to the end user because it is license and not sold. But, Blizzard's argument amounts to "It is licensed and not sold because the license implies that is not a sale". Therefore, the glider authors are "contributing to copyright infringement" (illegal?) instead of "contributing to license infringement" (not illegal?) and should be punished under copyright law, and any open sourcing should also be blocked as it causes the same problem. But, a different part of that copyright law does not apply because the end user is not an owner.
The problem seems to me that a license would be able to throw out anything related to 3rd party interoperability in any program that has a a recurring service component or for some reason does not resemble a 'sale'. Why? Even if the 3rd party program does not explicitly make a copy of the original program, many read operations will result in an implicit copy of some parts of the program (disk->mem, mem->registers). Therefore, any EULA that can throw out 17 U.S.C. Â 117 can also prevent interoperability because the actual use of the 3rd party software may violate copyright.
Some possible examples that I can think of off the top of my head are apps running in an OS running in a VM, OS's running in VM, and apps running in wine using MS's DLLs.
Disclaimer: I play WoW heavily and hate cheaters. I just wish they had a better legal leg to stand on than a tortured interpretation of copyright law.
Less memory allocated by one particular program can mean more physical memory available to other programs or more programs able to be run without paging. Also, less total memory allocated by applications can mean more memory used for disk caching depending on OS.
This is seriously the best option. Just write a detailed quote for set up of the server, OS installation, DB, replication, licenses, SSL tunnels required, and recurring rack space allocation and power costs that will be required.
They will either decide not to due to costs (you win) or pony up the money (you win again).
Remember your time is (or at least should be) billable.
Correct, it is not so simple. Part of the problem is the company is not based in the US. The other part is much of the player base is also not based in the US. It would be like punishing the Boy Scouts of America for breaking French laws.
My personal preferences for rules of enguagement: I win.
It might be good for an RP oriented setup or something, but not really as a zero sum game. There has to be something enforcing a set of balance rules, or else the giefers will win.
Enforcement means sometimes people are forced to do thing they would rather not, which is counter to the openness of your idea.:)
I think with the way the system works this kind of thing would not help spammers in the long run. Having an and in the email would be high probability positive indicators that would drive their probability toward.99999... Meaning that it's probability factor would start to dwarf any number of 'good' words that could be stuck in the message.
It would however drive the credibility of 'good' words down, which imho is the main danger..
Either way, Microsoft break their own rules; there's numerous windows on a standard desktop that run as localsystem. Use my shatter tool to verify this - there's a whole load of unnamed windows which might be running as Localsystem, and a few invisible windows (like the DDE server) that definitely are. Security boundary my arse.
Note that a program can have a window object that can be invisible or act in some way that only 'sort of' behaves like a window. It looks to me that any arbitrary user can gain the privs of any other arbitrary user if they can just get a handle on a window owned by that user, visible or hidden. The hard part is just getting the handle, and having a visible window just makes it easier.
IMHO, Usenet is good for binaries because the person doing the transmission only has to upload a file once for lots of people to download it (like a web server) but it is hard for an ISP to squelch it because of the automatic propagation to other ISPs.
And the idea that it's only efficient if someone on every server that gets the message downloads it is mostly false. For it to be more efficient it only has to be downloaded by more users that servers the message was propagated to (assuming that some of those users are not using the same news server as the poster).
The ironic thing is that patents are supposed to prevent this kind of thing, but when a software company patents anything the whole net community screams bloody murder.
Slashdot Mirror
This is part of their RMT mitigation system. Specifically, players can exchange in-game money for extra game play, or can get in-game money by buying people additional game time. The "PLEX" in-game object is how this type of transaction is performed. The plex is tradeable and has an option to extend your account time in its context menu (which consumes the plex).
http://tobolds.blogspot.com/2009/02/nobody-minds-eves-legal-rmt.html
how would the police prove that Freddie hadn't been killing dwarves or whatever for six months
Because blizzard logs this kind of transaction. All they would have to do is subpoena the logs.
I suspect that the article is actually blowing out of proportion the MMO currency trading side of things. A quick googling shows that evidently gambling is illegal in china and the government has gone to lengths to crack down on it:
http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/China_steps_up_anti-gambling_campaign
If :
A) MMO currency trading is not a notable contributor to China's GDP
B) Virtual currency makes bypassing gambling restrictions easier
C) China is genuinely interested in curbing gambling
It sounds to me like banning on-line currency trading is a no-brainer as it will criminalize the entry point people would use to get around local gambling restrictions. Any problem with MMO currency trading is purely incidental.
And I doubt China cares about the cost the rest of the world pays for [Titansteel Bar]s on the auction house..
Actually, the opposite IS true. It just takes thousands of years longer..
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For each SMS containing a banned word, simply forge a second SMS from the same sender that says "Just kidding."
Seems to work fine for their main "firewall."
Your velocity relative to the old portal's frame of reference becomes the velocity relative to the new portal's frame of reference.
For example, if a person falls straight down into a portal on a platform moving 5 m/s, and the exit portal is on a stationary floor, the person will hurl upward out of the stationary portal with a horizontal component of 5 m/s. Which way the person goes depends on the orientations of the portals. Flip either the exit or entrance portal and you'll go the opposite direction.
Sounds like a fantastic idea for portal 2. :D
WTF is that supposed to mean? Ironic though; when nuclear power was first engineered they said it would make electricity "too cheap to meter".
This is a valid question. Here is my guess (I won't claim to be able to read his mind.)
The idea is the power generation its self is cheap enough to be negligible. So, the only cost is the overhead of delivery. Since the cost of delivery does not change depending on how much power being used at a given moment, the end user would only have to pay a fixed rate for maintenance. A meter to measure the amount used would have a higher maintenance overhead than the profit from the electricity used, so it would be a waste to bother using one; Therefore "too cheap to meter"
To connect that back to the original idea, I think he is saying that we should offer a fixed rate for access to any song in a pool because the overhead for charging for each song individually is actually more wasteful.
To kwote the artikle:
"Rather than grammarians getting in a huff about "argument" being spelled "arguement" or "opportunity" as "opertunity," why not accept anything that's phonetically (fonetickly anyone?) correct as long as it can be understood? ...
University teachers should simply accept as variant spelling those words our students most commonly misspell.",
(emphisis added)
So, the sugestion is to only alow "comon" speling mistakes that make fonetik sence. So, a mispeling of a homonim that does not reflekt the corekt sound would not be alowed. For exampel, "tots" as used wod not be alowed as it doesnot reflekt the 'th' sound in the spokan word.
This could eventualy result in homonims being spelt the same way as nonfonetic spellings would fall into disuse. I'm not convinsed of a necesity for words with difrent meanings but the same sound to be speled difrent; This is not an ideografic langwij after all.
Isn't it going to be a little unrealistic to have a million starships going around? Besides, what do you have to work up to? Admiral, then the game gets REALLY boring. You just sit behind a desk.
Well consider the alternative:
Starting as a Redshirt. You would die over and over again and accomplish little more than taking hit for those higher ranking than you. At some point you might be able to grind up enough gear and rank to do some damage, but until then your stuck hoping to wast their ammo enough to provide your team an advantage.
Wait, I just described endgame PvP for most MMOs. Ouch.
Disclaimer: I play WoW
The NPC mission system is fairly casual and widely available, just not what some would consider "end game" (which is ok if you only play casually - it will take a year to outgrow the npc missions).
I know a few ways to play eve in only a few hours a day that involve market manipulation or manufacturing. It's rather complicated and not available right off the bat to most players.
Eve is a game that has fun in it, but the fun does not present its self as a bright yellow "!". It takes some discerning - but some people consider discerning fun :)
Here is the key part I recommend looking at:
The Court accordingly will grant summary judgment in favor of Blizzard with respect to liability on the contributory and vicarious copyright infringement claims in Counts II and III.
(emphasis added)
Not contributory means "helped them do it." So they are liable because they helped people violate copyright law, according to the ruling.
Thank you for the links. Please correct me if my understanding of the situation is faulty :)
So Blizzard says that, basically, ownership does not apply to the end user because it is license and not sold. But, Blizzard's argument amounts to "It is licensed and not sold because the license implies that is not a sale". Therefore, the glider authors are "contributing to copyright infringement" (illegal?) instead of "contributing to license infringement" (not illegal?) and should be punished under copyright law, and any open sourcing should also be blocked as it causes the same problem. But, a different part of that copyright law does not apply because the end user is not an owner.
The problem seems to me that a license would be able to throw out anything related to 3rd party interoperability in any program that has a a recurring service component or for some reason does not resemble a 'sale'. Why? Even if the 3rd party program does not explicitly make a copy of the original program, many read operations will result in an implicit copy of some parts of the program (disk->mem, mem->registers). Therefore, any EULA that can throw out 17 U.S.C. Â 117 can also prevent interoperability because the actual use of the 3rd party software may violate copyright.
Some possible examples that I can think of off the top of my head are apps running in an OS running in a VM, OS's running in VM, and apps running in wine using MS's DLLs.
Disclaimer: I play WoW heavily and hate cheaters. I just wish they had a better legal leg to stand on than a tortured interpretation of copyright law.
Less memory allocated by one particular program can mean more physical memory available to other programs or more programs able to be run without paging. Also, less total memory allocated by applications can mean more memory used for disk caching depending on OS.
This is seriously the best option. Just write a detailed quote for set up of the server, OS installation, DB, replication, licenses, SSL tunnels required, and recurring rack space allocation and power costs that will be required.
They will either decide not to due to costs (you win) or pony up the money (you win again).
Remember your time is (or at least should be) billable.
Correct, it is not so simple. Part of the problem is the company is not based in the US. The other part is much of the player base is also not based in the US. It would be like punishing the Boy Scouts of America for breaking French laws.
I'd like to add as an honorable mention, Evlis, the Welsh corgi that demonstrated an intuitive ability to solve calculus optimization problems.
.. competative as a game.
:)
My personal preferences for rules of enguagement: I win.
It might be good for an RP oriented setup or something, but not really as a zero sum game. There has to be something enforcing a set of balance rules, or else the giefers will win.
Enforcement means sometimes people are forced to do thing they would rather not, which is counter to the openness of your idea.
If a password has 38 characters, it also has 30 characters. Duh.
Also, this post has 5 words.
I think with the way the system works this kind of thing would not help spammers in the long run. .99999... Meaning that it's probability factor would start to dwarf any number of 'good' words that could be stuck in the message.
Having an and in the email would be high probability positive indicators that would drive their probability toward
It would however drive the credibility of 'good' words down, which imho is the main danger..
Either way, Microsoft break their own rules; there's numerous windows on a standard desktop that run as localsystem. Use my shatter tool to verify this - there's a whole load of unnamed windows which might be running as Localsystem, and a few invisible windows (like the DDE server) that definitely are. Security boundary my arse.
Note that a program can have a window object that can be invisible or act in some way that only 'sort of' behaves like a window. It looks to me that any arbitrary user can gain the privs of any other arbitrary user if they can just get a handle on a window owned by that user, visible or hidden. The hard part is just getting the handle, and having a visible window just makes it easier.
IMHO, Usenet is good for binaries because the person doing the transmission only has to upload a file once for lots of people to download it (like a web server) but it is hard for an ISP to squelch it because of the automatic propagation to other ISPs.
And the idea that it's only efficient if someone on every server that gets the message downloads it is mostly false. For it to be more efficient it only has to be downloaded by more users that servers the message was propagated to (assuming that some of those users are not using the same news server as the poster).
He say in the article that he did try to help on it, but the author ignored him.
I'm against privacy violations as much as most people here, but for the paranoid the solution to this seems simple enough:
Find tag.
Destroy tag.
The ironic thing is that patents are supposed to prevent this kind of thing, but when a software company patents anything the whole net community screams bloody murder.
Duh.