Indeed. Most travel sites, and general shopping sites, initially organise things by what they call "Relevance", and in many cases this is a totally ambiguous term! Relevance for them can surely mean which supplier paid them the most for advertising. Organising results based on someone's hardware, if a correlation can be shown between the hardware and end choices for accommodation in this case, actually seems pretty sensible and less sinister than what I'd usually expect.
Looking forward to reading all the paranoid and rage filled comments though...
Seriously guys, how many times do I have to say this. This is simply not the right way to settle an argument online.
You two made the elementary errors of trying to compromise, offering each other a chance to explain your positions, listening to one another, caring about a misunderstanding and finally added insult to injury by wishing him a nice day. For shame.
This should have proceeded immediately to name calling, threats to burn each others' houses down, childish and grammatically incorrect insults and finished with one of you vowing to leave the site and never return. I expect better of you both next time.
I have one of these too; it's on my wrist right now. Sadly I can't recommend that anyone buy this awful hunk of crap, as it's currently broken despite being less than 2 months old. Google around for reviews and you'll find that the instrumentation in the watch frequently dies and needs repairs, which can cost £200 ($300) out of warranty.
Not in my experience. I've had my ISP go down and all I had to do was hit the hotkey to turn my wireless adapter off. Steam was happy to go into offline mode, but sometimes does have a problem if a router drops out or something along those lines. Again disabling the network adapter will fix that. Steam seems to be unhappy when it thinks there SHOULD be a network connection but there isn't.
I work in the movie business, and I've noticed how the console games manufacturers have, in about 1/5th the time Hollywood used, turned themselves into everything that sucks about the modern entertainment industry.
While I totally agree with the sentiment, I feel compelled to point out that what you and I might view as a never-ending torrent of crap from both Hollywood and most of the gaming industry, others view as a wonderful rainbow tinged cascade of entertainment.
The claim you quote is also sounding distinctly like the WiiMote. I assume they're fairly sure the WiiMote does infring upon all claims or they'll be wasting their time and money here eh?
Congratulations, you read the title of the patent and jumped on the word "absolute". Patents are actually about the Claims, and if you'd like to skip down to there you'll see that the WiiMote does appear to infringe on Claim 1, at least.
That's just your opinion. Don't confuse it with fact. You cite a few specific examples, but that doesn't make for a convincing argument. I can happily counter you with an anecdote of my own.
I spent a few pounds sterling on some in-game items for Team Fortress 2; some gifts that could be dished out to random players on the community server I play at. It was an event night, lots of people spread across the multiple servers, lots of gifts flying around, lots of fun and enjoyment being had. The small amount of money I spent on in game items hopefully brought a smile to a few people's faces, and definitely gave me a bit of a pleasure at giving something back to the community I enjoyed being part of. The fact that some actual cash had been expended to make this happen gave a bit of meaning to the act. If gift items were totally free there'd be no point.
Please explain how this translates, in any way, to microtransactions being inherently immoral.
Well done Sir. I was poised to add to the several people below who have already replied to point out your error, but then I decided to read your post all the way through to the end. Truely an impressive example of comedy online nerd-baiting.
I would have bought Driver 4 if it were published by a company that took a sane approach to DRM. The whole constant online check thing they slapped on games a few months back was enough to pursuade me never to spend any money on their products ever again. Another case where pirates get all the benefits and real customers get screwed. Unlike many/. users though, I refuse to take the immoral choice of pirating it. Not only is it wrong, I simply refuse to contribute to any "statistics" that the likes of Ubisoft use as a weapon to beat customers over the head with while taking their money.
If Bethesda's representatives have an issue with that then they should just contest the application.
This may be a stupid question, but isn't that accomplished by the lawsuit? Or are you implying that they should contest it in some other fashion? Contrary to popular opinion, a lawsuit is not always a middle finger extended to the accused. It can simply be a "we need to defend this and this is how the legal system dictates our defence should proceed".
The gun was planted you say? How intriguing! I assume you have some evidence to back up your wild (and libellous) claim? Something that overrides the statement from a local, and those of friends where they state that he carried a gun for "protection"? No? Ah well, hopefully no-one in the police reads that and presses charges.
When social networks enable a segment of the population to challenge an oppressive government in Europe, those social networks are vilified.
Oh what a load of crap. You're seriously suggesting that for the average person on the street the British government is as oppressed as some of those in the Middle East? You also (incorrectly) assume that this was about challenging the government. The looters and rioters who were interviewed on TV, and who have given statements in court, have had surprisingly little to say (i.e. absolutely nothing) about their motivations other than "I wanted things for free so I took them". Save yourself some time and don't bother posting several paragraphs below ridiculous hyperbole. People stop reading at that point.
Correct, and if you asked the British public to define it the vast majority would agree that 99% of what was happening wasn't politically motivated in any way. If you somehow managed to get a fair and unbiased (i.e. convinced people they wouldn't be killed/beaten for speaking the truth) opinion from those under the rule of Mubarak they'd be the opposite, sure that the popultion at large were dissenting because of horrific oppression. Don't spout platitudes like "one man's freedom fighter......" without actually thinking about it. The people ritoing in Britain were not freedom fighters or anything like that. They were not motivated by anything other than greed and criminality. Nothing noble about it. And yes, I'm sure there was criminality during the Egyptian riots, but the difference there, one you've so conveniently ignored, was that there was a hell of a lot more people who were actually protesting about the government and the ruling elite.
Don't cheapen this debate by trying to draw sensationalist parallels between things that are just not the same.
Sorry but I'm calling bullshit. Looting because you want free shit is not in any way like rioting for a political reason. Burning down a furniture warehouse because you're looking for a thrill is not like organising a violent protest because you, your family and your community are harshly oppressed on a day to day basis. You've drawn comparisons between things that just aren't the same. I'm assuming you're not British and your media spent less time on this than mine did. If you'd seen the interviews with the looters, heard the shit coming out of these people's mouths and seen what they were doing, instead of leaping upon the opportunity to draw frankly laughable parallels between the British government and the horrific dictatorship of Mugabe, then perhaps you wouldn't make such a ridiculous statement. But hey, it got modded up right so it must be correct? Right.....?
As many others have said, there's a distinct difference between shutting down communication mediums to stop people fighting for freedom from an oppresive regime, and shutting down communcation mediums to stop people from organising looting and other self-serving crimes. It depends on your point of view, and I'm not saying that it's right in either case, but these ridiculous comparisons to dictatorships trying to stop their citizens from overthrowing them are oranges and apples.
Replacement components that allow you to upgrade easily without having to replace the whole machine? A thriving games industry that isn't focussed around casual games that rely on extremely simple user-input methods? Better top-end specifications due to more space for components within the hardware casing? More choice (compared to no choice in many cases) of operating systems due to standardization of architectures and hardware?
There are more I'm sure, butdoubtless some or all of these things are not relevant to you and other tablet users. The point is that tablets aren't for everyone and TFA claiming that PCs are obselete is a little bit..........hmmm.........I hesistate to use the word "idiotic".......perhaps I'll go with "premature" instead.
Gemcraft Labyrinth has kept me entertained for a couple of months. Probably the best tower defence game I've ever played. Worth the few quid I spent on it.
Interesting to hear that you bought it. I assume that was so you could play it while you were away from the PC as (I'm sure you already know) it's availabel for free at all the usual Flash game portal sites.
This is happening so often that better make a hack.slashdot.org and just add the site that was hacked and when... this is getting old...
Agreed, but what I haven't seen is follow up stories about these breaches. I though Anonymous or LulzSec were due to release loads of News of the World/News International e-mails they'd obtained? Did I miss a story or are they still holding onto it?
You copy pasted that list above and some of your points have been fairly successfully rebutted, particularly the flip side of the "can not issue an automatic charge back" which screws me as a buyer if the seller is a fraudster. Anyway, I don't want to hear your arguments again since I saw them higher up in the thread.
What I'd like to know is how many Bitcoins you have, and can you honestly say that your defense of it is totally independent of this fact? Don't worry about actually replying with a number since theres very little point. The current captain of the Bitcoin boat publically stated "I have X amount of BC" which was about as verifiable as my declaration of the number of atoms in my body.
I personally wont invest in it as I missed the opportunities if I ran my FreeBSD partition and 8 months ago and could have generated a couple hundred dollars of free money.
And that RIGHT THERE, is the problem. It is NOT free money. For you to make some money from BC someone else would have to pony up those dollars. Not free! It's at the expense of someone else who is probably hoping that their investment will make them money at yet another person's expense.
If you want a list of the problems people see with Bitcoin then I suggest you have a look around this thread. There are dozens of recuring criticisms that people bring up and I see the same rebuttals every time, almost as if they're quoting from an FAQ or something. I have no particularly strong feelings about Bitcoin, but I can totally see where the criticisms come from. Botcoin is justified by an argument that "money is only as valuable as people make it" or similar. It requires a degree of faith and willingness to accept paper notes or digital coins as having some value. The major criticism that I can see is that a lot of people are not willing to accept Bitcoin on faith, wouldn't accept a white paper or a cryptography algorithm as proof that the bubble won't burst and than the backing of a government does carry a lot more weight than promises that is cryptographically secure (until we get quantum computing as admitted by the originator).
Slashdot Mirror
This makes sense.
Indeed. Most travel sites, and general shopping sites, initially organise things by what they call "Relevance", and in many cases this is a totally ambiguous term! Relevance for them can surely mean which supplier paid them the most for advertising. Organising results based on someone's hardware, if a correlation can be shown between the hardware and end choices for accommodation in this case, actually seems pretty sensible and less sinister than what I'd usually expect.
Looking forward to reading all the paranoid and rage filled comments though...
Seriously guys, how many times do I have to say this. This is simply not the right way to settle an argument online.
You two made the elementary errors of trying to compromise, offering each other a chance to explain your positions, listening to one another, caring about a misunderstanding and finally added insult to injury by wishing him a nice day. For shame.
This should have proceeded immediately to name calling, threats to burn each others' houses down, childish and grammatically incorrect insults and finished with one of you vowing to leave the site and never return. I expect better of you both next time.
I have one of these too; it's on my wrist right now. Sadly I can't recommend that anyone buy this awful hunk of crap, as it's currently broken despite being less than 2 months old. Google around for reviews and you'll find that the instrumentation in the watch frequently dies and needs repairs, which can cost £200 ($300) out of warranty.
Not in my experience. I've had my ISP go down and all I had to do was hit the hotkey to turn my wireless adapter off. Steam was happy to go into offline mode, but sometimes does have a problem if a router drops out or something along those lines. Again disabling the network adapter will fix that. Steam seems to be unhappy when it thinks there SHOULD be a network connection but there isn't.
Good idea.
Better idea.
I work in the movie business, and I've noticed how the console games manufacturers have, in about 1/5th the time Hollywood used, turned themselves into everything that sucks about the modern entertainment industry.
While I totally agree with the sentiment, I feel compelled to point out that what you and I might view as a never-ending torrent of crap from both Hollywood and most of the gaming industry, others view as a wonderful rainbow tinged cascade of entertainment.
Of course they're wrong and we're right. Right?
The claim you quote is also sounding distinctly like the WiiMote. I assume they're fairly sure the WiiMote does infring upon all claims or they'll be wasting their time and money here eh?
Congratulations, you read the title of the patent and jumped on the word "absolute". Patents are actually about the Claims, and if you'd like to skip down to there you'll see that the WiiMote does appear to infringe on Claim 1, at least.
Depends, he may have wanted you to evaluate his agreement before he increased it.
That's just your opinion. Don't confuse it with fact. You cite a few specific examples, but that doesn't make for a convincing argument. I can happily counter you with an anecdote of my own.
I spent a few pounds sterling on some in-game items for Team Fortress 2; some gifts that could be dished out to random players on the community server I play at. It was an event night, lots of people spread across the multiple servers, lots of gifts flying around, lots of fun and enjoyment being had. The small amount of money I spent on in game items hopefully brought a smile to a few people's faces, and definitely gave me a bit of a pleasure at giving something back to the community I enjoyed being part of. The fact that some actual cash had been expended to make this happen gave a bit of meaning to the act. If gift items were totally free there'd be no point.
Please explain how this translates, in any way, to microtransactions being inherently immoral.
Well done Sir. I was poised to add to the several people below who have already replied to point out your error, but then I decided to read your post all the way through to the end. Truely an impressive example of comedy online nerd-baiting.
I would have bought Driver 4 if it were published by a company that took a sane approach to DRM. The whole constant online check thing they slapped on games a few months back was enough to pursuade me never to spend any money on their products ever again. Another case where pirates get all the benefits and real customers get screwed. Unlike many /. users though, I refuse to take the immoral choice of pirating it. Not only is it wrong, I simply refuse to contribute to any "statistics" that the likes of Ubisoft use as a weapon to beat customers over the head with while taking their money.
If Bethesda's representatives have an issue with that then they should just contest the application.
This may be a stupid question, but isn't that accomplished by the lawsuit? Or are you implying that they should contest it in some other fashion? Contrary to popular opinion, a lawsuit is not always a middle finger extended to the accused. It can simply be a "we need to defend this and this is how the legal system dictates our defence should proceed".
I do so love feeding trolls so here goes. Ahem...
The gun was planted you say? How intriguing! I assume you have some evidence to back up your wild (and libellous) claim? Something that overrides the statement from a local, and those of friends where they state that he carried a gun for "protection"? No? Ah well, hopefully no-one in the police reads that and presses charges.
When social networks enable a segment of the population to challenge an oppressive government in Europe, those social networks are vilified.
Oh what a load of crap. You're seriously suggesting that for the average person on the street the British government is as oppressed as some of those in the Middle East? You also (incorrectly) assume that this was about challenging the government. The looters and rioters who were interviewed on TV, and who have given statements in court, have had surprisingly little to say (i.e. absolutely nothing) about their motivations other than "I wanted things for free so I took them". Save yourself some time and don't bother posting several paragraphs below ridiculous hyperbole. People stop reading at that point.
Correct, and if you asked the British public to define it the vast majority would agree that 99% of what was happening wasn't politically motivated in any way. If you somehow managed to get a fair and unbiased (i.e. convinced people they wouldn't be killed/beaten for speaking the truth) opinion from those under the rule of Mubarak they'd be the opposite, sure that the popultion at large were dissenting because of horrific oppression. Don't spout platitudes like "one man's freedom fighter......" without actually thinking about it. The people ritoing in Britain were not freedom fighters or anything like that. They were not motivated by anything other than greed and criminality. Nothing noble about it. And yes, I'm sure there was criminality during the Egyptian riots, but the difference there, one you've so conveniently ignored, was that there was a hell of a lot more people who were actually protesting about the government and the ruling elite.
Don't cheapen this debate by trying to draw sensationalist parallels between things that are just not the same.
Sorry but I'm calling bullshit. Looting because you want free shit is not in any way like rioting for a political reason. Burning down a furniture warehouse because you're looking for a thrill is not like organising a violent protest because you, your family and your community are harshly oppressed on a day to day basis. You've drawn comparisons between things that just aren't the same. I'm assuming you're not British and your media spent less time on this than mine did. If you'd seen the interviews with the looters, heard the shit coming out of these people's mouths and seen what they were doing, instead of leaping upon the opportunity to draw frankly laughable parallels between the British government and the horrific dictatorship of Mugabe, then perhaps you wouldn't make such a ridiculous statement. But hey, it got modded up right so it must be correct? Right.....?
As many others have said, there's a distinct difference between shutting down communication mediums to stop people fighting for freedom from an oppresive regime, and shutting down communcation mediums to stop people from organising looting and other self-serving crimes. It depends on your point of view, and I'm not saying that it's right in either case, but these ridiculous comparisons to dictatorships trying to stop their citizens from overthrowing them are oranges and apples.
Replacement components that allow you to upgrade easily without having to replace the whole machine? A thriving games industry that isn't focussed around casual games that rely on extremely simple user-input methods? Better top-end specifications due to more space for components within the hardware casing? More choice (compared to no choice in many cases) of operating systems due to standardization of architectures and hardware?
There are more I'm sure, butdoubtless some or all of these things are not relevant to you and other tablet users. The point is that tablets aren't for everyone and TFA claiming that PCs are obselete is a little bit..........hmmm.........I hesistate to use the word "idiotic".......perhaps I'll go with "premature" instead.
Gemcraft Labyrinth has kept me entertained for a couple of months. Probably the best tower defence game I've ever played. Worth the few quid I spent on it.
Interesting to hear that you bought it. I assume that was so you could play it while you were away from the PC as (I'm sure you already know) it's availabel for free at all the usual Flash game portal sites.
This is happening so often that better make a hack.slashdot.org and just add the site that was hacked and when... this is getting old...
Agreed, but what I haven't seen is follow up stories about these breaches. I though Anonymous or LulzSec were due to release loads of News of the World/News International e-mails they'd obtained? Did I miss a story or are they still holding onto it?
That was a different experiment.
You copy pasted that list above and some of your points have been fairly successfully rebutted, particularly the flip side of the "can not issue an automatic charge back" which screws me as a buyer if the seller is a fraudster. Anyway, I don't want to hear your arguments again since I saw them higher up in the thread.
What I'd like to know is how many Bitcoins you have, and can you honestly say that your defense of it is totally independent of this fact? Don't worry about actually replying with a number since theres very little point. The current captain of the Bitcoin boat publically stated "I have X amount of BC" which was about as verifiable as my declaration of the number of atoms in my body.
I personally wont invest in it as I missed the opportunities if I ran my FreeBSD partition and 8 months ago and could have generated a couple hundred dollars of free money.
And that RIGHT THERE, is the problem. It is NOT free money. For you to make some money from BC someone else would have to pony up those dollars. Not free! It's at the expense of someone else who is probably hoping that their investment will make them money at yet another person's expense.
If you want a list of the problems people see with Bitcoin then I suggest you have a look around this thread. There are dozens of recuring criticisms that people bring up and I see the same rebuttals every time, almost as if they're quoting from an FAQ or something. I have no particularly strong feelings about Bitcoin, but I can totally see where the criticisms come from. Botcoin is justified by an argument that "money is only as valuable as people make it" or similar. It requires a degree of faith and willingness to accept paper notes or digital coins as having some value. The major criticism that I can see is that a lot of people are not willing to accept Bitcoin on faith, wouldn't accept a white paper or a cryptography algorithm as proof that the bubble won't burst and than the backing of a government does carry a lot more weight than promises that is cryptographically secure (until we get quantum computing as admitted by the originator).