Would have to look too hard for it, but I used to play WoW quite seriously, and back when it became activision blizzard there was an epic shitstorm raised by that particular statement by Kotick. People basically expected him to add more then just monthly to WoW based on those statements (and it is starting to happen now, as they are preparing to launch the first feature that impacts gameplay that will require additional fees on top of monthly for ability to queue for dungeons with people from other realms).
A good thing would have been if Call of Duty went the World of Warcraft way, with people paying for a single subscription to all the content, and no boxed media fees.
Giving content that you have to pay 60$ and then some other content which you will pay externally is stupid, expecially since the CoD/MoH/Battlefield war is continually fought day by day by publishers by shitting out new releases on market, with new maps, weapons, and thus trying to lure in the online players from other communities.
It's an half step in the right direction, but it is a retarded half step and will see Activision fall down the stairs again, Bobby Kotik still does not get the online world at all. (And yes, remember: he already killed the holy cow of party games).
You pay for "box media" with world of warcraft. In fact, you still have to purchase every expansion (original wow + burning crusade + wrath of the lich king + cataclysm) if you want to play wow on same level with other players.
They do promotions, and the whole package is not that expensive, but without promotion it will still set your back more then a single game box just to get started.
Start following the recent and very well publisized case of mr. Assange. Including the things that legislators, members of government and judges say what should be done to him and what will be done to him if he is ever "caught".
You are arguing that just because we had a patent law passed in 1970s, we have to obey ANY patent given ANYWHERE, even if it is specifically stated as not patentable by our law that was passed?
Contradiction is quite heavy there.
And once again - the main reason you will most likely not find a single software patent case is because no one is stupid enough to bring one to any EU court. It's asking to get thrown out.
Companies don't pay their lawyers to lose in a spectacularly stupid fashion.
It's going to be a "public secret" through, because everyone in intelligence most likely knows of its existence, if not details on what and how it works (depending on how well unit is infiltrated).
You can start at google with following search terms:
1. Cold war torture 2. extraordinary rendition 3. CIA outsourcing torture and assassinations
Older and far more ghastly examples start coming once you start searching for 4. War on drugs columbia 5. American Latin American policies during cold war 6. US intelligence support for latin american dictatorships
Alternatively you could try reading the following news sources instead of heavily US-leaning english media on the internet such as US sources or BBC if you really seek to educate yourself:
1. France24 in english 2. Der Spiegel in english 3. Al-Jazeera in english 4. Generally russian news sources in russian 5. Generally chinese news sources in chinese 6. Many others who are not as heavily under cold war aged propaganda umbrella on the Western side as much of english-speaking media.
The reason for following as many sides as possible lies in the fact that essentially all of them lie to some extent. Reading the same piece from multiple sources allows you to construct something much closer to the real picture then any single side's view allows you to.
Of course you could claim that since USA has not confirmed, and often actively denied these claims or any other claims presented by alternative media sources and victims/witnesses, they're not true. But then, you can say the same for Chinese, Russian, French, British... any empire throughout the modern ages really.
On the opposite side of the fence, it's worth noting that USA itself, at least as far as intelligence sources go, likes to "pump up the fear" by spreading mis-information on its capabilities just like other empires do (Litvinenko makes a great example of how Russian side managed this, one guy dead in a horrible way, but essentially all dissidents who did real intelligence work for pay rather then just be attention whores in the news dropped whatever they were doing and went into hiding for a long time). Therefore a portion of information you'll find can be likely attributed to this in addition to the misunderstandings in addition to cases of misinformation. There is still quite a bit too much evidence in the major news sources as well as outside of them to ignore however.
Fun part is, you seem to be convinced I'm "bashing USA". I'm not. I'm stating that every major empire in the existence of humanity actively practised these measures to an extent. The only difference between USA and certain portion of its citizenry is that they try to actively deny engaging in these measures while actively blaming others doing them, in spite of getting caught with them everywhere in the world.
It would be quite surprising to see defensive and offensive units being rolled into a one unit, considering the massive difference in their tasks in this case. Defensive people have to work with infrastructure people to make sure it's hack-proof, while offensive guys have to assault infrastructure of other countries and test their own.
It would make sense to make two "units" who compete with one another, one being focused on defense and other on offense. At the same time, force information sharing on methods so that both can learn from each other's mistakes.
And chinese are nothing if not pragmatic to the extreme.
You are correct. The part where I stated outright falsehood was when I claimed it would require person in question to step on US soil. Dis-information part was about him being guilty of anything in the first place - incorrect assumption of guilt or mistaken identity was not uncommon.
There are several documented cases on each subject.
1. Not talking merely about trolling, but about patent MAD that currently exists. It's telling that, for example, in Nokia vs Apple they both chose to fight it out in USA courts.
Because even any EU court would've thrown all of their software patents out the moment case got to it.
2. European patent laws are being actively attempted to be subverted by certain key companies companies that like software patent MAD and ability to sqeeze small companies out of the market with threatening with those. It's worth noting that none of the major cases ever got a trial hearing, because companies know how it will end. With patent nullification. European parliament, that doesn't have power to introduce, but has power to veto directives which must be written in a law in all member states is so hostile to software patents that several attempts to introduce legislation allowing software patents were promptly killed by comission because they would have crashed and burned in a very public and embarrassing way.
3. You have NEVER written any software aimed at actual industry rather then consumer, have you? You tailor it for each CUSTOMER extensively. Not region. Not country. Not even a city. But each client's needs individually.
P.S. Attempting to enforce any local law that hasn't been agreed to be applied via at least bilateral agreements across borders wouldn't be just laughed out of the courts (even US courts that will tell you it's not their jurisdiction most of the time, through US judges are known to want to play activists sometimes), they will cause diplomatic issues on a major scale. Most of the laws you discuss being "applied across borders" are actually laws that have been internationally agreed upon, and enacted into local laws based on these agreements.
No offense, but if you happen to publish some nice leaks from US that make it look bad, and then are dumb enough to step on US soil, you won't even get a trial.
You'll just vanish, and maybe a few years later you'll be found nicely brainwashed in Egypt, or where ever it is that USA outsources torture nowadays after Mubarak's flashy exit. If you're lucky, you'll just get shot and no one will ever find the body. It's not like we don't have precedent on these things you know.
Different countries have different things they don't want to see published in any way, but ways they deal with publishers are quite similar once you strip all the fluff.
all at the same time is a broken system. It awards trolling, it awards overly abundant patenting, it awards overly covering patents and it awards massive stifling of competition via patenting.
Normal patenting either has none of these problems, or has them in a MUCH lesser way.
As for your last argument, USA is essentially the only country in the world that is trying to get its system imposed on the world dictatorship-style. Rest of the world doesn't care for it. Even EU, USA's closest ally has all but told USA to stuff it. There is no "fairness" or "respect" in it any more then in USA not respecting EU privacy laws and openly abusing data-sharing agreements. Which is a far worse offense then any implied patent offense.
You are extremely clueless about international situation and legislation if you think that just because a branch of company X is located in country Y, entire company X has to follow the laws of country Y. Biggest case to point so far: Microsoft and EU browser wars, microsoft's loss only caused it to change methods in EU. Elsewhere, EU has no jurisdiction. In spite of EU being a larger economy then USA.
Same goes for USA and its patent legislation. Sure, the branches will have to obey USA laws. But outside, you can stuff it just like Saudi Arabians can stuff it with their mandated burkha, illegality of alchohol, illegality of woman being outside without a male family memeber and so on.
Every country has its own kind of legal insanity. Yours are intellectual property and criminal system. No one else in the world wants either of them as their own. With luck, USA's importance as a global player will keep on diminishing as the current trend has been last decade, and your ability to impose your laws on the world will diminish with it.
There is a reason why the world doesn't have insane patent wars over software, with exception of one country. And that country provides plenty of reason for the rest of the world to never have any.
Except that they do, because if someone made a stool that was different enough, but still fullfilled the same function, they would be legal. In software, you can patent things so basic that essentially ANY stool would be infringing. It's equivalent of patenting "a device designed for people to sit on using a surface for the ass and several legs that connects said surface to the ground".
Also, your second argument utterly collapses when you realise that countries that accept software patents don't account but for a marginal fraction of all countries. By your logic, that would simply break this patent system, as you could freely infringe in most developed countries anyway. Yet this doesn't happen anywhere near the scale you're suggesting, specifically because of copyright issues.
If history has taught us something, it's the fact that humans in fact do not learn from history. Same generation doesn't repeat its own mistakes - but those that come after them do.
The only reason we hadn't had world war 3 sometimes in the 60s is presence of nuclear deterrent. In a horrifying and yet funny way, Einstein has actually succeeded in the pacifist agenda of his later days... by creating the greatest weapon of destruction known to man in his earlier years.
The only thing we can hope is that this deterrent holds even when America finally sinks into the same hole that empires before it sank into, and its ICBM-carried nuclear arsenal gets in the hands of future tyrants.
Actually, the most fascist. While your passenger trains are shit, little known fact is that rest of the world dreams of having your railroads' excellence when it comes to moving freight on rails. Even best EU countries and Japan are severals tens of percent in terms of economic efficiency and several times in terms of volume behind USA when it comes to moving freight on rails.
In fact it's argued that the main reason why Amtrak's passenger trains are so bad with schedules is on purpose - Amtrack doesn't want passenger trains on its tracks as they get priority over freight trains, and they have freight train schedules done to perfection. Also that's where vast majority of the money is for them.
Copyroght protects specific software implementation. Patent protects the way you make your idea work. There is no need for software patents, as they grant far more protection to software-based ideas then other ideas.
There should always be a right to implement the same idea in a different way legally. Normal patents work this way. Software patents, for some insane reason (read - corruption in US government that allowed creation of software patents), do not.
Stinger is a shoulder launcher ground to air missile. In that realm, russians were (and still are) so ahead it's not even funny. It's air to air where they lagged.
Early stuff was crappy viruses like Format A, that did absolutely nothing but replicate themselves. You could run f-prot from inside the infected OS and catch everything.
Slashdot Mirror
Not sure how "charge more" part came to life, other then the fact that we pretty much always pay more for games here in Europe in general.
That said, GoG was about 30% more expensive then play.com when it came to buying w2.
Considering that their initial statement was "no DRM whatsoever", yes, it's terrible. I was very surprised to find DRM on my DVD version.
Would have to look too hard for it, but I used to play WoW quite seriously, and back when it became activision blizzard there was an epic shitstorm raised by that particular statement by Kotick. People basically expected him to add more then just monthly to WoW based on those statements (and it is starting to happen now, as they are preparing to launch the first feature that impacts gameplay that will require additional fees on top of monthly for ability to queue for dungeons with people from other realms).
"Not yet". It's a clear long-term goal officially stated by Activision.
A good thing would have been if Call of Duty went the World of Warcraft way, with people paying for a single subscription to all the content, and no boxed media fees.
Giving content that you have to pay 60$ and then some other content which you will pay externally is stupid, expecially since the CoD/MoH/Battlefield war is continually fought day by day by publishers by shitting out new releases on market, with new maps, weapons, and thus trying to lure in the online players from other communities.
It's an half step in the right direction, but it is a retarded half step and will see Activision fall down the stairs again, Bobby Kotik still does not get the online world at all.
(And yes, remember: he already killed the holy cow of party games).
You pay for "box media" with world of warcraft. In fact, you still have to purchase every expansion (original wow + burning crusade + wrath of the lich king + cataclysm) if you want to play wow on same level with other players.
They do promotions, and the whole package is not that expensive, but without promotion it will still set your back more then a single game box just to get started.
Kotick's and his "packaging people's".
Start following the recent and very well publisized case of mr. Assange. Including the things that legislators, members of government and judges say what should be done to him and what will be done to him if he is ever "caught".
You are arguing that just because we had a patent law passed in 1970s, we have to obey ANY patent given ANYWHERE, even if it is specifically stated as not patentable by our law that was passed?
Contradiction is quite heavy there.
And once again - the main reason you will most likely not find a single software patent case is because no one is stupid enough to bring one to any EU court. It's asking to get thrown out.
Companies don't pay their lawyers to lose in a spectacularly stupid fashion.
It's going to be a "public secret" through, because everyone in intelligence most likely knows of its existence, if not details on what and how it works (depending on how well unit is infiltrated).
You can start at google with following search terms:
1. Cold war torture
2. extraordinary rendition
3. CIA outsourcing torture and assassinations
Older and far more ghastly examples start coming once you start searching for
4. War on drugs columbia
5. American Latin American policies during cold war
6. US intelligence support for latin american dictatorships
Alternatively you could try reading the following news sources instead of heavily US-leaning english media on the internet such as US sources or BBC if you really seek to educate yourself:
1. France24 in english
2. Der Spiegel in english
3. Al-Jazeera in english
4. Generally russian news sources in russian
5. Generally chinese news sources in chinese
6. Many others who are not as heavily under cold war aged propaganda umbrella on the Western side as much of english-speaking media.
The reason for following as many sides as possible lies in the fact that essentially all of them lie to some extent. Reading the same piece from multiple sources allows you to construct something much closer to the real picture then any single side's view allows you to.
Of course you could claim that since USA has not confirmed, and often actively denied these claims or any other claims presented by alternative media sources and victims/witnesses, they're not true. But then, you can say the same for Chinese, Russian, French, British... any empire throughout the modern ages really.
On the opposite side of the fence, it's worth noting that USA itself, at least as far as intelligence sources go, likes to "pump up the fear" by spreading mis-information on its capabilities just like other empires do (Litvinenko makes a great example of how Russian side managed this, one guy dead in a horrible way, but essentially all dissidents who did real intelligence work for pay rather then just be attention whores in the news dropped whatever they were doing and went into hiding for a long time). Therefore a portion of information you'll find can be likely attributed to this in addition to the misunderstandings in addition to cases of misinformation. There is still quite a bit too much evidence in the major news sources as well as outside of them to ignore however.
Fun part is, you seem to be convinced I'm "bashing USA". I'm not. I'm stating that every major empire in the existence of humanity actively practised these measures to an extent. The only difference between USA and certain portion of its citizenry is that they try to actively deny engaging in these measures while actively blaming others doing them, in spite of getting caught with them everywhere in the world.
It would be quite surprising to see defensive and offensive units being rolled into a one unit, considering the massive difference in their tasks in this case. Defensive people have to work with infrastructure people to make sure it's hack-proof, while offensive guys have to assault infrastructure of other countries and test their own.
It would make sense to make two "units" who compete with one another, one being focused on defense and other on offense. At the same time, force information sharing on methods so that both can learn from each other's mistakes.
And chinese are nothing if not pragmatic to the extreme.
You are correct. The part where I stated outright falsehood was when I claimed it would require person in question to step on US soil. Dis-information part was about him being guilty of anything in the first place - incorrect assumption of guilt or mistaken identity was not uncommon.
There are several documented cases on each subject.
1. Not talking merely about trolling, but about patent MAD that currently exists. It's telling that, for example, in Nokia vs Apple they both chose to fight it out in USA courts.
Because even any EU court would've thrown all of their software patents out the moment case got to it.
2. European patent laws are being actively attempted to be subverted by certain key companies companies that like software patent MAD and ability to sqeeze small companies out of the market with threatening with those. It's worth noting that none of the major cases ever got a trial hearing, because companies know how it will end. With patent nullification. European parliament, that doesn't have power to introduce, but has power to veto directives which must be written in a law in all member states is so hostile to software patents that several attempts to introduce legislation allowing software patents were promptly killed by comission because they would have crashed and burned in a very public and embarrassing way.
3. You have NEVER written any software aimed at actual industry rather then consumer, have you? You tailor it for each CUSTOMER extensively. Not region. Not country. Not even a city. But each client's needs individually.
P.S. Attempting to enforce any local law that hasn't been agreed to be applied via at least bilateral agreements across borders wouldn't be just laughed out of the courts (even US courts that will tell you it's not their jurisdiction most of the time, through US judges are known to want to play activists sometimes), they will cause diplomatic issues on a major scale. Most of the laws you discuss being "applied across borders" are actually laws that have been internationally agreed upon, and enacted into local laws based on these agreements.
Just out of interest, why? The law sounds a bit strange, probably an old law based on some safety measure of the time?
No offense, but if you happen to publish some nice leaks from US that make it look bad, and then are dumb enough to step on US soil, you won't even get a trial.
You'll just vanish, and maybe a few years later you'll be found nicely brainwashed in Egypt, or where ever it is that USA outsources torture nowadays after Mubarak's flashy exit. If you're lucky, you'll just get shot and no one will ever find the body. It's not like we don't have precedent on these things you know.
Different countries have different things they don't want to see published in any way, but ways they deal with publishers are quite similar once you strip all the fluff.
I'm arguing that the fact that software can be:
1. Obfuscated
2. Patented
3. Copyrighted
all at the same time is a broken system. It awards trolling, it awards overly abundant patenting, it awards overly covering patents and it awards massive stifling of competition via patenting.
Normal patenting either has none of these problems, or has them in a MUCH lesser way.
As for your last argument, USA is essentially the only country in the world that is trying to get its system imposed on the world dictatorship-style. Rest of the world doesn't care for it. Even EU, USA's closest ally has all but told USA to stuff it. There is no "fairness" or "respect" in it any more then in USA not respecting EU privacy laws and openly abusing data-sharing agreements. Which is a far worse offense then any implied patent offense.
You are extremely clueless about international situation and legislation if you think that just because a branch of company X is located in country Y, entire company X has to follow the laws of country Y. Biggest case to point so far: Microsoft and EU browser wars, microsoft's loss only caused it to change methods in EU. Elsewhere, EU has no jurisdiction. In spite of EU being a larger economy then USA.
Same goes for USA and its patent legislation. Sure, the branches will have to obey USA laws. But outside, you can stuff it just like Saudi Arabians can stuff it with their mandated burkha, illegality of alchohol, illegality of woman being outside without a male family memeber and so on.
Every country has its own kind of legal insanity. Yours are intellectual property and criminal system. No one else in the world wants either of them as their own. With luck, USA's importance as a global player will keep on diminishing as the current trend has been last decade, and your ability to impose your laws on the world will diminish with it.
There is a reason why the world doesn't have insane patent wars over software, with exception of one country. And that country provides plenty of reason for the rest of the world to never have any.
Except that they do, because if someone made a stool that was different enough, but still fullfilled the same function, they would be legal. In software, you can patent things so basic that essentially ANY stool would be infringing. It's equivalent of patenting "a device designed for people to sit on using a surface for the ass and several legs that connects said surface to the ground".
Also, your second argument utterly collapses when you realise that countries that accept software patents don't account but for a marginal fraction of all countries. By your logic, that would simply break this patent system, as you could freely infringe in most developed countries anyway. Yet this doesn't happen anywhere near the scale you're suggesting, specifically because of copyright issues.
You know what's funny? This was the aspect of USSR that was derided in the West.
You know what's not funny? That it's coming to the West.
If history has taught us something, it's the fact that humans in fact do not learn from history. Same generation doesn't repeat its own mistakes - but those that come after them do.
The only reason we hadn't had world war 3 sometimes in the 60s is presence of nuclear deterrent. In a horrifying and yet funny way, Einstein has actually succeeded in the pacifist agenda of his later days... by creating the greatest weapon of destruction known to man in his earlier years.
The only thing we can hope is that this deterrent holds even when America finally sinks into the same hole that empires before it sank into, and its ICBM-carried nuclear arsenal gets in the hands of future tyrants.
Actually, the most fascist. While your passenger trains are shit, little known fact is that rest of the world dreams of having your railroads' excellence when it comes to moving freight on rails. Even best EU countries and Japan are severals tens of percent in terms of economic efficiency and several times in terms of volume behind USA when it comes to moving freight on rails.
In fact it's argued that the main reason why Amtrak's passenger trains are so bad with schedules is on purpose - Amtrack doesn't want passenger trains on its tracks as they get priority over freight trains, and they have freight train schedules done to perfection. Also that's where vast majority of the money is for them.
Copyroght protects specific software implementation. Patent protects the way you make your idea work. There is no need for software patents, as they grant far more protection to software-based ideas then other ideas.
There should always be a right to implement the same idea in a different way legally. Normal patents work this way. Software patents, for some insane reason (read - corruption in US government that allowed creation of software patents), do not.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZHReqKRvonE = what should have gone to eurovision.
That was below the belt.
Sidewinder. Air to air IR guided missile.
Stinger is a shoulder launcher ground to air missile. In that realm, russians were (and still are) so ahead it's not even funny. It's air to air where they lagged.
Early stuff was crappy viruses like Format A, that did absolutely nothing but replicate themselves. You could run f-prot from inside the infected OS and catch everything.