The fun thing is that the DMCA could be perfectly fine if it were limited to case B that you mention. What I'm honestly sick of is people sticking every single godforsaken thing that happens on the Internet under the DMCA. Maybe this decision will put the kibosh on a bit of that. Maybe not.
If someone wants your SSN but has no reason under God and Man to get it, just give it to him with the first digit changed to 8. No SSNs in the 800 range have ever been assigned.
The only way to win a MMORPG is to quit. ("winning" being defined as "the point beyond which one cannot play any longer") All other actions simply lead to increased play.
After all, there was no way to know for sure that you weren't a nudist, the Internet being the perfect place for such a person to shop- and there is no practical method of determining nude or not beyond webcams! They were careful not to offend you. I'm sure the letters from five thousand angry nudists made them take this important step.
In practice, any attempt at the creation of a transparent society would run into a competition problem. Powerful people would still want their information hidden, and would enlist many undetectable methods to hide it (think "two sets of books") which investigators would then spend a great deal of time trying to pierce. But, you say, there's a legal guarantee to access that will prevent this problem! Yes, and where there's a law, there's a lawyer. When you're dealing with a problem of potential (as opposed to one involving an actual situation,) the amount of legal fudging can be astronomical. This is all well and good if you're Donald Rumsfeld or Bill Gates, but where does that leave the hoi polloi? Nowhere, and without any legal guarantee of privacy, they're fucked doubly- no right to defend themselves, and no practical ability to enforce transparency on the powerful. Also, socially effective issues on an individual level are not all newsworthy- the brave reporters at the local newspaper aren't going to do the legwork to run your personal TIA program on your employer to find out if he's a homophobe. You don't have the resources to exercise your "right" to transparency on a regular basis, so it becomes a liability since those with greater resources have no problem using it casually.
The bottom line is that many simple rights are there to give those with no power in a situation some area of breathing room, and a do what thou wilt sort of "right" like complete transparency is simply an invitation to abuse.
I smell the distinct scent of subliminals around this. Which is to say, it's a sexy, seductive idea, sure to garner oodles of funding from idiots in various marketing departments, but its relevance is limited... and kudos to the researchers for thinking of such a silly but powerful way to run their gravy train!
Years ago, Ultima Online had a pretty egregious cheating application called UOExtreme. It let you do all kinds of special stuff- run faster than normal, see hidden people, get an automatic readout of damage you did to players, and have general interface improvements that allowed you to play the game more efficiently.
Well, people got banned for UOE use for quite a while, but the thing that killed it was that the UO dev team simply emasculated it and made it no more than a device for the delivery of trojans.
How did they do this? Clever engineering and greater awareness of the needs of their playerbase.
Fastwalk was fixed by making walk packets require a response from the server before moving the player.
See hidden was fixed by just not telling non-GM clients where hidden players were, and disallowing attacks and other operations on hidden characters. Invisibility was handled in a pretty slipshod way beforehand- the server just told the client, "hey don't show this guy."
The automatic damage readout was just integrated into the client, with the addition of Starcraft-style health bars showing the damage level of your current target.
The interface improvement issue was solved by the legalization of a similar program called UOAssist. Many operations in UO rely on an extremely clumsy interface requiring many mouse clicks and movements for actions that should be far simpler. UOAssist changes this, offering somewhat of an "expert interface" for the game. UOAssist's author sends all program changes to UO's developers to be examined before release.
Come to think of it, you probably know all this stuff already...
Min/maxers are some of the most serious players of any game. The fact of the matter is that we all engage in min/maxer style behavior when we play, regardless of style, because we want to succeed in the game to be able to enjoy it.
Accomodating min/maxers makes them into your unofficial debugging force, as well- if a game's based on numbers, you ought to be able to see the numbers. Other people want to see them, even if you don't- and trying to legislate your form of "immersion" on players is pretty silly. We all find our own level.
Remember, also, it's your friendly neighborhood explorer that teaches you all those nifty tricks that you use every day:)
I always thought the point of new client architectures was to enable players who'd like to play but don't have the right gear to enter the game at the moment.
Making new servers for them seems rather redundant If they want newbie servers, they ought to make new servers and limit them to accounts under their first 90 days of play time for the first 90 days of the server's existence (UO did a similar thing with the Lake Austin server for new accounts when it opened.)
The answer is simple: DO NOT LET THE CLIENT KNOW MORE THAN IT ABSOLUTELY HAS TO, and be willing to CHANGE THAT DEFINITION on an ongoing basis.
Serverside cheating is the real bitch of the matter in MMORPGs, and no law will save you there. Only long term vigilance and quick response will protect a MMORPG population from serverside exploits.
In a related note, BNETD is not even the same thing as ShowEQ. BNETD is a server emulator, and in fact is more conducive to lower cheating rates simply because one can create "walled gardens" wherein only trusted users can play, and the player population can be more appropriately vetted for fair play- mechanics-related, sportsmanship, and otherwise! ShowEQ is akin to a EQ debugging program, showing data known by the client but not revealed normally.
Every MMORPG I have played has started out not nearly as thin as it had to be, and nearly all have had to undergo significant redevelopment to rectify this matter.
EQ can be forgiven for not knowing this at its start (it was one of the earliest MMORPGs) but it's had a long time to learn from its own experiences and those of its competitors.
Assuming that everything known by the client will be known and exploited by the players using it would seem to be the safest rule.
Raph Koster's rule of "the client is in the hands of the enemy" seems to have been forgotten by EQ's developers- if ShowEQ is such a problem, it's time, perhaps, that they stopped telling the client all these nasty things they didn't want it to know. I mean, I first remember ShowEQ coming 'round *3 years ago*. Why they haven't simply made the client ignorant of things it shouldn't know in all this time is beyond me.
My god. X this X that X the other thing... now even Macintosh has been infected with the stupid X idea. Was X Windows such an awesome name that people just had to go gluing it onto everything? Honestly, the X reminds me of two silly concepts.
One, calling everything "EXTREME". Space Moose had that category pretty well handled.
Two, people on AIM sticking X after their name because they can't be the only "ShAdOw", "DESTRUCTOR" or "GandalF". And if ShAdOwX is already taken, why, jam another X on the front of it, until you get xxxXXX-ShADoW-XXXxxx. Ultima Online is infested with this sort of behavior.
Slashdot Mirror
The government already paid for the laying of those lines. So, I imagine, the government should have a say.
Don't like it? Tough tits, that's capitalism. He who has the bucks gets the rights.
Koo koo kachoo!
Your description of mendacity is full of minacity.
The fun thing is that the DMCA could be perfectly fine if it were limited to case B that you mention. What I'm honestly sick of is people sticking every single godforsaken thing that happens on the Internet under the DMCA. Maybe this decision will put the kibosh on a bit of that. Maybe not.
If someone wants your SSN but has no reason under God and Man to get it, just give it to him with the first digit changed to 8. No SSNs in the 800 range have ever been assigned.
The only way to win a MMORPG is to quit. ("winning" being defined as "the point beyond which one cannot play any longer") All other actions simply lead to increased play.
The harder you look for something, the more likely it is that you will find it, whether it exists or not.
After all, there was no way to know for sure that you weren't a nudist, the Internet being the perfect place for such a person to shop- and there is no practical method of determining nude or not beyond webcams! They were careful not to offend you. I'm sure the letters from five thousand angry nudists made them take this important step.
Spam? What spam? POPFile kicks ass.
The solution isn't any law or regulation, but better filters.
Unproved assertion, bad assumption, flawed argument.
In practice, any attempt at the creation of a transparent society would run into a competition problem. Powerful people would still want their information hidden, and would enlist many undetectable methods to hide it (think "two sets of books") which investigators would then spend a great deal of time trying to pierce. But, you say, there's a legal guarantee to access that will prevent this problem! Yes, and where there's a law, there's a lawyer. When you're dealing with a problem of potential (as opposed to one involving an actual situation,) the amount of legal fudging can be astronomical. This is all well and good if you're Donald Rumsfeld or Bill Gates, but where does that leave the hoi polloi? Nowhere, and without any legal guarantee of privacy, they're fucked doubly- no right to defend themselves, and no practical ability to enforce transparency on the powerful. Also, socially effective issues on an individual level are not all newsworthy- the brave reporters at the local newspaper aren't going to do the legwork to run your personal TIA program on your employer to find out if he's a homophobe. You don't have the resources to exercise your "right" to transparency on a regular basis, so it becomes a liability since those with greater resources have no problem using it casually.
The bottom line is that many simple rights are there to give those with no power in a situation some area of breathing room, and a do what thou wilt sort of "right" like complete transparency is simply an invitation to abuse.
I smell the distinct scent of subliminals around this. Which is to say, it's a sexy, seductive idea, sure to garner oodles of funding from idiots in various marketing departments, but its relevance is limited... and kudos to the researchers for thinking of such a silly but powerful way to run their gravy train!
Years ago, Ultima Online had a pretty egregious cheating application called UOExtreme. It let you do all kinds of special stuff- run faster than normal, see hidden people, get an automatic readout of damage you did to players, and have general interface improvements that allowed you to play the game more efficiently.
Well, people got banned for UOE use for quite a while, but the thing that killed it was that the UO dev team simply emasculated it and made it no more than a device for the delivery of trojans.
How did they do this? Clever engineering and greater awareness of the needs of their playerbase.
Fastwalk was fixed by making walk packets require a response from the server before moving the player.
See hidden was fixed by just not telling non-GM clients where hidden players were, and disallowing attacks and other operations on hidden characters. Invisibility was handled in a pretty slipshod way beforehand- the server just told the client, "hey don't show this guy."
The automatic damage readout was just integrated into the client, with the addition of Starcraft-style health bars showing the damage level of your current target.
The interface improvement issue was solved by the legalization of a similar program called UOAssist. Many operations in UO rely on an extremely clumsy interface requiring many mouse clicks and movements for actions that should be far simpler. UOAssist changes this, offering somewhat of an "expert interface" for the game. UOAssist's author sends all program changes to UO's developers to be examined before release.
Come to think of it, you probably know all this stuff already...
Same thing, different words :)
Min/maxers are some of the most serious players of any game. The fact of the matter is that we all engage in min/maxer style behavior when we play, regardless of style, because we want to succeed in the game to be able to enjoy it.
:)
Accomodating min/maxers makes them into your unofficial debugging force, as well- if a game's based on numbers, you ought to be able to see the numbers. Other people want to see them, even if you don't- and trying to legislate your form of "immersion" on players is pretty silly. We all find our own level.
Remember, also, it's your friendly neighborhood explorer that teaches you all those nifty tricks that you use every day
I always thought the point of new client architectures was to enable players who'd like to play but don't have the right gear to enter the game at the moment.
Making new servers for them seems rather redundant If they want newbie servers, they ought to make new servers and limit them to accounts under their first 90 days of play time for the first 90 days of the server's existence (UO did a similar thing with the Lake Austin server for new accounts when it opened.)
The answer is simple: DO NOT LET THE CLIENT KNOW MORE THAN IT ABSOLUTELY HAS TO, and be willing to CHANGE THAT DEFINITION on an ongoing basis.
Serverside cheating is the real bitch of the matter in MMORPGs, and no law will save you there. Only long term vigilance and quick response will protect a MMORPG population from serverside exploits.
In a related note, BNETD is not even the same thing as ShowEQ. BNETD is a server emulator, and in fact is more conducive to lower cheating rates simply because one can create "walled gardens" wherein only trusted users can play, and the player population can be more appropriately vetted for fair play- mechanics-related, sportsmanship, and otherwise! ShowEQ is akin to a EQ debugging program, showing data known by the client but not revealed normally.
Every MMORPG I have played has started out not nearly as thin as it had to be, and nearly all have had to undergo significant redevelopment to rectify this matter.
EQ can be forgiven for not knowing this at its start (it was one of the earliest MMORPGs) but it's had a long time to learn from its own experiences and those of its competitors.
Assuming that everything known by the client will be known and exploited by the players using it would seem to be the safest rule.
Raph Koster's rule of "the client is in the hands of the enemy" seems to have been forgotten by EQ's developers- if ShowEQ is such a problem, it's time, perhaps, that they stopped telling the client all these nasty things they didn't want it to know. I mean, I first remember ShowEQ coming 'round *3 years ago*. Why they haven't simply made the client ignorant of things it shouldn't know in all this time is beyond me.
Good publicity move you pulled there- way to get on CNet.
Better watch out for those unsanitized telephones, then.
You could be out masturbating right now, instead you're writing comments on Slashdot. I mean, what are you using your energy for, anyway?
So, you're still allowed to not bother ranking everyone. Fair enough- most of the pages I'd read on the subject led me to believe otherwise.
My god. X this X that X the other thing... now even Macintosh has been infected with the stupid X idea.
Was X Windows such an awesome name that people just had to go gluing it onto everything? Honestly, the X reminds me of two silly concepts.
One, calling everything "EXTREME". Space Moose had that category pretty well handled.
Two, people on AIM sticking X after their name because they can't be the only "ShAdOw", "DESTRUCTOR" or "GandalF". And if ShAdOwX is already taken, why, jam another X on the front of it, until you get xxxXXX-ShADoW-XXXxxx. Ultima Online is infested with this sort of behavior.
Phooey. X sucks no matter where it is.
Hell, even I don't read it anymore. I just go into meta-moderation and reply at random to whatever comments come up.