It occurs to me that if they continue to track your car.. that somehow they could be held accountable if something bad happens to you even if you're no longer paying for their services. If they continue to have any involvement with you after the fact, then if something happens and they don't help you out which results in damage or death, then they could potentially be held somehow liable for that if they fail to intervene in a timely fashion that could save you from such damage or death.
I suddenly had this thought to make some kind of browser add-on that would delete the FB cookies automatically whenever you signed out of FB. Then the reality of what could happen set it. In a flash, I already saw a letter showing up in my email or mailbox out in front of my house with a cease and desist letter from FB signed by zuckerman's legal team. Then I pictured a lawsuit for interrupting FB's business; countless of hours and dollars I don't have lost to the void of fat rich snickerting lying lawyers.
Now a days it seems that doing anything that is right (ie: left) and that helps fight intrusion into our privacy does nothing but get you into trouble with a legal machine that is as much now practially worthless as it is corrupt and dangerous to our society. And now that I just said that, I'm sure an FBI probe will begin into everything I do to make sure I'm not some kind of domestic terroist. Yep, gotta love how things have turned out.
No, it won't be banned by politicians. It will be voted into use by politicians with a portion of the law stating that they will not be used on politicians, only people making under a certain amount of money a year. Extra powerful versions will be used on those of different classes/races/ethnicities (but the power of the magnets will be held as state secrets so can't disclosed, even in court under a judges order).
I made the same commitment not to buy SC2 because of the connection requirement and I have stuck to that commitment. This is just wrong for several reasons.
1) You can't play with the games internals like you can with a game that you install and can play without being restricted to blizzard's online jailhouse. This is exactly what this is like. Your game is imprisoned with a 24 hour a day guard rotation to keep watch on everything you do with the game. No mods to play and experiement with = no more in depth long term fun. I really enjoyed being able to install various mods into D1 and D2 and it looks like I'm going to be stuck playing those games forever since I will never see another release of Diablo otherwise.
2) What happens when blizzard dies? Don't think for one minute that it can't happen. How many large powerhouse game companies have we seen crash to the ground? So, in twelve years when something bad happens and blizzard crash and burns like so many of its predessors, what happens to our games? Well, they crash with Blizzard since you can't play the game without blizzard's DRM servers being up and running. Those servers costs money to run and keep online so if blizzard's cash that maintains these servers stops, so do our games. I don't want to take that risk of losing my $60+ investment some years down the road and never being able to play the game again. What a horrible thought indeed. I still play and very much enjoy Diablo 1 and Starcraft and they're old! I'm glad they don't require an online connection!
How do we stand up against this? How do we tell Blizzard that we want our games to be OUR games; to do with what we please; to still be able to play them in thirty years; to not be so controlled all the time by corporate assholes who only have dollar signs in their eyes. What can we do? Well, we can not buy the games. That's they only way we can send a message becuase, obviously, complaining online does nothing but make the execs say "I'm surprised by so many complaining about the online requirement but this is the way it is and this is the way it shall forever be. Mwaaahahaha!". Fuckers!
. If the founders had thought that simply saying "In God We Trust" was unacceptable, they wouldn't have done that.
True. But remember, we weren't even a hundred years past burning witches when our founding fathers were busy hoping to guarantee our liberties against government. At the time, just saying that god doesn't exist could possibly get you into deep deep trouble.
If I recall, you can either submit info to the BSA with your name (in order to win a reward) or do so anonymously. I have no idea if the BSA saves anonymous data (therefore making it non-anonymous).
This news was already noted some time back. I recall reading about it online somewhere and this was new news at the time (within the last year, maybe two at most). I recall the whole story about how neanderthal dna was found in all people of european and asian decent but not in any african people.
I remember this being mentioned quite some time ago (months? A year or more maybe?). I don't have a link to post but I'm certain this has already been reported; if not by these scientists, then another.
I've been using (or trying to use) symphony for about a year now (maybe longer - don't remember) and it has so many problems that I fear to use it beyond anything but a simple text editor. Whenever I try to do anything more advanced (tables within tables for example) the thing will just crash completely and disappear from the screen along with, of course, anything I was working on.
After OOo ended up under the control of the evil Mr Burns er.. Larry, I decided I wasn't going to use any version of it after Oracle's control of it. That's when I decided to try out Symphony and use it instead but, like I said, it's a mess.
Is there any hope for FOSS office projects that have any hope of competing with MS?
It sounds like we need some laws that prosecute software developers and project managers for stealing from the people of the united states. Start prosecuting people for this crap and it wouldn't happen so much.
They do on occasion but as stated earlier, it is rare. Not long ago I read of a story where five or more sheriff deputies tortured a guy in his home but before doing so, the deputies ordered his wife and toddler son out of the house. As the wife was leaving, she switched on a tape recorder that was hidden from the officers. The whole torture session was recorded and later used against the officers in court. All of them, I believe, were fired and a few of them were sentenced to five years in prison. The guy that was tortured was one short a six pack mentally and was a known drug dealer (supposedly). and the deputies illegally entered his home without warrant or orders from superiors and a few of yhem were off duty. They hooked electrodes up to the guys balls and shocked him over and over in hopes of coercing him into signing a confession that he was a drug dealer. He held out and never did sign the confession. Other than the officers being sent to prison, I do not know what, if any, civil action was taken against the officers and/or the county that employed them. When I read the story, I was actually surprised that the officer(s) that led the torture session only got five years. What would happen if I walked into some cops house, kicked out his wife and kid and started electrocuting his balls in order to make him sign a confession saying that he was a corrupt peace officer? I can imagine a little more than five years. That's one thing that eats me up is the unfairness of our judicial system and how it protects corrupt officials.
From what I understand, he has a prior criminal record (prior to his SF Admin situation). Because of that, he may not be allowed to live and work in other (decent) countries. Also, this is probably news that was read all over the civilized world so I can't see any company anywhere in the world to work in IT. I believe his IT career is officially over unless he works for himself.
Is it these odd regulations why I don't see model rockets in stores anymore (along with their small rocket engines that looked similar to an m-80 fire cracker with a hole in the middle)? I've wondered off and on over the years why I don't see those things being sold anymore. when I was kid I saw them all the time and always wanted to buy n try them out but didn't have the money as a kid. And now that I'm an adult, they're not around anymore. WTF!?
I've never seen any episode of ghost hunter (is that what it's called?) or any other paranormal show except many something back in my early childhood days (back in the late 70s) when I didn't know any better and can't really recall the shows anyway. In any case, I saw some spoof footage in a southpark episode not long ago where they were showing the ghost hunters just walk around inside a house saying "what was that!" and "did you hear that!" really fast. It goes to show what a joke the ghosthunter show probably is. Once you've been spoofed by southpark, its time to publicly admit that you're a fraud.
That was fun. Kind of like a where's waldo fad. Reminds me of the fad of the guy standing on one of the twin towers with the plane in the background right before it hit then the same guy showing up all over the net just for the fun of it. Now it's time for the Time Travelers Fad. Cool!
None of this matters if a net connection is req...
on
Diablo 3 Hands-On
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· Score: 1
A discussion between my wife and I today:
me: I've decided not to buy Starcraft II afterall.
wife: Really? Why?
me: because they require a broadband internet connection just to play single player games instead of just mulit-player games.
wife: What? They're pulling that crap too!?
me: yep. that they are. And sadly, if they play the same game with Diablo II, I will not be buying that either.
wife: I understand that.
me: They're (Blizzard) also suing people who have made single player game mods for Starcraft.
wife: how does such a thing hurt anyone let alone the company who makes Starcraft?
me: As far as I know.. it doesn't. Blizzard, who makes the game, just wants to be iron fisted when doing so makes no sense.
wife: well then, don't worry. The plans I had for your birthday and/or xmas will be quickly rearranged.
me: good idea. No one should be required to spend over sixty dollars for a game they intend on playing by themselves then also have to fork over $30 to $60 a month in high speed internet fees in order to play their single player, non-internet necessary game.
wife: Yea, It's ridiculous!
You reading this Blizzard? Stop playing these games and I'll go back to buying your products. Otherwise.. I will never purchase another blizzard product again. I may be one person which doesn't make a different to you, but I'm hoping there's enough people out there that feel the same way and will work together to change your policies. You were a good, un-corrupt company at one time..... what happened? The younger generation of gamers may be too stupid to resist your new tactics.. but us older gamers are a bit smarter and more disciplined and won't fall for it.
I have not yet bought SCII. I was waiting for things to work themselves out first (like this little tidbit). If Blizzard wants to play these kinds of games on people who aren't really hurting Blizzard (or their profits) in any way, then I will never purchase SCII or any other future Blizzard title. Luckily, I have the discipline to resist buying such games, even when their as cool and as anticipated as SCII. Too bad everyone else doesn't have the same discipline otherwise we could bring Blizzard to their knees and prevent them from doing crap like this. They should have never made their game a broadband internet required concoction anyway. There's too many bad things that can result from that and I want no part of it.
Also factor in returning and replacing parts that don't work, test and burn-in, loading software, and managing licenses.
Exactly right. I worked at a large behavioral health agency for several years and at one time we tried doing it the DIY way. The amount of time we ended up spending on such a task became too overwhelming of or time and it didn't take us long to realize that the best way to go (and more cost efficient in the long run when you consider the new amount of time you have to spend on building and maintaining them, the separate part by part warranties you have to keep track of, the OS licensing (and any other additional software you're dealing with that isn't dell OEM) and the other things mentioned in the quote above, it is just better to keep working with Dell. I have to agree with so many others though that a thousand bucks a pop per workstation sounds.... wrong. Something is amiss unless you're also purchasing a lot of productivity/misc software from dell OEM.
I worked as a network admin/tech support/web dev guy for a non-profit behavioral health agency for just over four years and they had all kinds of branded merchandise: clocks, pens, cups, stress balls. Some of the really cool stuff was typically taken home by the higher ups (fancy clocks/pens). The healthcare reps would also bring in large amounts of food for their presentations. I have yet to see a company where they actually act responsible and not accept such bribes.
On another related story, one of my long time doctors told me that in one of the healthcare clinics he worked for the boss required that a certain percent of the scripts he wrote be for a certain branded drug. He didn't approve of such tactics and was part of the reason he left said clinic.
...whatever was posted on FB (not under oath) weighed more heavily than court testimony (that was under oath).
Interesting point. What if I'm the type of person that wants others to think that I'm actually doing better than I really am. You know.. the type of person that doesn't like to complain in front of others or admit that they're not feeling well so they don't look weak or for whatever other reasons. Such a thing as a facebook profile should not be used against anyone in a court of law under such circumstances. If I'm really sick, especially if it's because of some reason that could cause some embarrassment, then I wouldn't want everyone to know about it and I may say "feeling good" on my profile.
Slashdot Mirror
It occurs to me that if they continue to track your car .. that somehow they could be held accountable if something bad happens to you even if you're no longer paying for their services. If they continue to have any involvement with you after the fact, then if something happens and they don't help you out which results in damage or death, then they could potentially be held somehow liable for that if they fail to intervene in a timely fashion that could save you from such damage or death.
I suddenly had this thought to make some kind of browser add-on that would delete the FB cookies automatically whenever you signed out of FB. Then the reality of what could happen set it. In a flash, I already saw a letter showing up in my email or mailbox out in front of my house with a cease and desist letter from FB signed by zuckerman's legal team. Then I pictured a lawsuit for interrupting FB's business; countless of hours and dollars I don't have lost to the void of fat rich snickerting lying lawyers.
Now a days it seems that doing anything that is right (ie: left) and that helps fight intrusion into our privacy does nothing but get you into trouble with a legal machine that is as much now practially worthless as it is corrupt and dangerous to our society. And now that I just said that, I'm sure an FBI probe will begin into everything I do to make sure I'm not some kind of domestic terroist. Yep, gotta love how things have turned out.
No, it won't be banned by politicians. It will be voted into use by politicians with a portion of the law stating that they will not be used on politicians, only people making under a certain amount of money a year. Extra powerful versions will be used on those of different classes/races/ethnicities (but the power of the magnets will be held as state secrets so can't disclosed, even in court under a judges order).
Either that, or they're experiencing the current reality that for every open position there are 6 people currently not working.
Here, let me fix that for you. "... for every one position there are >85 people currently not working." There you go.
I made the same commitment not to buy SC2 because of the connection requirement and I have stuck to that commitment. This is just wrong for several reasons. 1) You can't play with the games internals like you can with a game that you install and can play without being restricted to blizzard's online jailhouse. This is exactly what this is like. Your game is imprisoned with a 24 hour a day guard rotation to keep watch on everything you do with the game. No mods to play and experiement with = no more in depth long term fun. I really enjoyed being able to install various mods into D1 and D2 and it looks like I'm going to be stuck playing those games forever since I will never see another release of Diablo otherwise. 2) What happens when blizzard dies? Don't think for one minute that it can't happen. How many large powerhouse game companies have we seen crash to the ground? So, in twelve years when something bad happens and blizzard crash and burns like so many of its predessors, what happens to our games? Well, they crash with Blizzard since you can't play the game without blizzard's DRM servers being up and running. Those servers costs money to run and keep online so if blizzard's cash that maintains these servers stops, so do our games. I don't want to take that risk of losing my $60+ investment some years down the road and never being able to play the game again. What a horrible thought indeed. I still play and very much enjoy Diablo 1 and Starcraft and they're old! I'm glad they don't require an online connection! How do we stand up against this? How do we tell Blizzard that we want our games to be OUR games; to do with what we please; to still be able to play them in thirty years; to not be so controlled all the time by corporate assholes who only have dollar signs in their eyes. What can we do? Well, we can not buy the games. That's they only way we can send a message becuase, obviously, complaining online does nothing but make the execs say "I'm surprised by so many complaining about the online requirement but this is the way it is and this is the way it shall forever be. Mwaaahahaha!". Fuckers!
. If the founders had thought that simply saying "In God We Trust" was unacceptable, they wouldn't have done that.
True. But remember, we weren't even a hundred years past burning witches when our founding fathers were busy hoping to guarantee our liberties against government. At the time, just saying that god doesn't exist could possibly get you into deep deep trouble.
If I recall, you can either submit info to the BSA with your name (in order to win a reward) or do so anonymously. I have no idea if the BSA saves anonymous data (therefore making it non-anonymous).
This news was already noted some time back. I recall reading about it online somewhere and this was new news at the time (within the last year, maybe two at most). I recall the whole story about how neanderthal dna was found in all people of european and asian decent but not in any african people.
I remember this being mentioned quite some time ago (months? A year or more maybe?). I don't have a link to post but I'm certain this has already been reported; if not by these scientists, then another.
I've been using (or trying to use) symphony for about a year now (maybe longer - don't remember) and it has so many problems that I fear to use it beyond anything but a simple text editor. Whenever I try to do anything more advanced (tables within tables for example) the thing will just crash completely and disappear from the screen along with, of course, anything I was working on.
.. Larry, I decided I wasn't going to use any version of it after Oracle's control of it. That's when I decided to try out Symphony and use it instead but, like I said, it's a mess.
After OOo ended up under the control of the evil Mr Burns er
Is there any hope for FOSS office projects that have any hope of competing with MS?
He's still using his TRS-80 so it takes a while.
It sounds like we need some laws that prosecute software developers and project managers for stealing from the people of the united states. Start prosecuting people for this crap and it wouldn't happen so much.
They do on occasion but as stated earlier, it is rare. Not long ago I read of a story where five or more sheriff deputies tortured a guy in his home but before doing so, the deputies ordered his wife and toddler son out of the house. As the wife was leaving, she switched on a tape recorder that was hidden from the officers. The whole torture session was recorded and later used against the officers in court. All of them, I believe, were fired and a few of them were sentenced to five years in prison. The guy that was tortured was one short a six pack mentally and was a known drug dealer (supposedly). and the deputies illegally entered his home without warrant or orders from superiors and a few of yhem were off duty. They hooked electrodes up to the guys balls and shocked him over and over in hopes of coercing him into signing a confession that he was a drug dealer. He held out and never did sign the confession. Other than the officers being sent to prison, I do not know what, if any, civil action was taken against the officers and/or the county that employed them. When I read the story, I was actually surprised that the officer(s) that led the torture session only got five years. What would happen if I walked into some cops house, kicked out his wife and kid and started electrocuting his balls in order to make him sign a confession saying that he was a corrupt peace officer? I can imagine a little more than five years. That's one thing that eats me up is the unfairness of our judicial system and how it protects corrupt officials.
But that Charles Bronson guy! I heard he did some vigilante stuff! Oh .. and Clyde Shelton. Let's not forget him!
From what I understand, he has a prior criminal record (prior to his SF Admin situation). Because of that, he may not be allowed to live and work in other (decent) countries. Also, this is probably news that was read all over the civilized world so I can't see any company anywhere in the world to work in IT. I believe his IT career is officially over unless he works for himself.
Is it these odd regulations why I don't see model rockets in stores anymore (along with their small rocket engines that looked similar to an m-80 fire cracker with a hole in the middle)? I've wondered off and on over the years why I don't see those things being sold anymore. when I was kid I saw them all the time and always wanted to buy n try them out but didn't have the money as a kid. And now that I'm an adult, they're not around anymore. WTF!?
I've never seen any episode of ghost hunter (is that what it's called?) or any other paranormal show except many something back in my early childhood days (back in the late 70s) when I didn't know any better and can't really recall the shows anyway. In any case, I saw some spoof footage in a southpark episode not long ago where they were showing the ghost hunters just walk around inside a house saying "what was that!" and "did you hear that!" really fast. It goes to show what a joke the ghosthunter show probably is. Once you've been spoofed by southpark, its time to publicly admit that you're a fraud.
Sneakernet reintroduced! Yay!
The other day I came across this picture.
That was fun. Kind of like a where's waldo fad. Reminds me of the fad of the guy standing on one of the twin towers with the plane in the background right before it hit then the same guy showing up all over the net just for the fun of it. Now it's time for the Time Travelers Fad. Cool!
A discussion between my wife and I today:
.. it doesn't. Blizzard, who makes the game, just wants to be iron fisted when doing so makes no sense.
.. I will never purchase another blizzard product again. I may be one person which doesn't make a different to you, but I'm hoping there's enough people out there that feel the same way and will work together to change your policies. You were a good, un-corrupt company at one time ... .. what happened? The younger generation of gamers may be too stupid to resist your new tactics .. but us older gamers are a bit smarter and more disciplined and won't fall for it.
me: I've decided not to buy Starcraft II afterall.
wife: Really? Why?
me: because they require a broadband internet connection just to play single player games instead of just mulit-player games.
wife: What? They're pulling that crap too!?
me: yep. that they are. And sadly, if they play the same game with Diablo II, I will not be buying that either.
wife: I understand that.
me: They're (Blizzard) also suing people who have made single player game mods for Starcraft.
wife: how does such a thing hurt anyone let alone the company who makes Starcraft?
me: As far as I know
wife: well then, don't worry. The plans I had for your birthday and/or xmas will be quickly rearranged.
me: good idea. No one should be required to spend over sixty dollars for a game they intend on playing by themselves then also have to fork over $30 to $60 a month in high speed internet fees in order to play their single player, non-internet necessary game.
wife: Yea, It's ridiculous!
You reading this Blizzard? Stop playing these games and I'll go back to buying your products. Otherwise
I have not yet bought SCII. I was waiting for things to work themselves out first (like this little tidbit). If Blizzard wants to play these kinds of games on people who aren't really hurting Blizzard (or their profits) in any way, then I will never purchase SCII or any other future Blizzard title. Luckily, I have the discipline to resist buying such games, even when their as cool and as anticipated as SCII. Too bad everyone else doesn't have the same discipline otherwise we could bring Blizzard to their knees and prevent them from doing crap like this. They should have never made their game a broadband internet required concoction anyway. There's too many bad things that can result from that and I want no part of it.
Also factor in returning and replacing parts that don't work, test and burn-in, loading software, and managing licenses.
Exactly right. I worked at a large behavioral health agency for several years and at one time we tried doing it the DIY way. The amount of time we ended up spending on such a task became too overwhelming of or time and it didn't take us long to realize that the best way to go (and more cost efficient in the long run when you consider the new amount of time you have to spend on building and maintaining them, the separate part by part warranties you have to keep track of, the OS licensing (and any other additional software you're dealing with that isn't dell OEM) and the other things mentioned in the quote above, it is just better to keep working with Dell. I have to agree with so many others though that a thousand bucks a pop per workstation sounds .... wrong. Something is amiss unless you're also purchasing a lot of productivity/misc software from dell OEM.
And I thought math was black and white. Not anymore, apparently.
I worked as a network admin/tech support/web dev guy for a non-profit behavioral health agency for just over four years and they had all kinds of branded merchandise: clocks, pens, cups, stress balls. Some of the really cool stuff was typically taken home by the higher ups (fancy clocks/pens). The healthcare reps would also bring in large amounts of food for their presentations. I have yet to see a company where they actually act responsible and not accept such bribes.
On another related story, one of my long time doctors told me that in one of the healthcare clinics he worked for the boss required that a certain percent of the scripts he wrote be for a certain branded drug. He didn't approve of such tactics and was part of the reason he left said clinic.
...whatever was posted on FB (not under oath) weighed more heavily than court testimony (that was under oath).
Interesting point. What if I'm the type of person that wants others to think that I'm actually doing better than I really am. You know .. the type of person that doesn't like to complain in front of others or admit that they're not feeling well so they don't look weak or for whatever other reasons. Such a thing as a facebook profile should not be used against anyone in a court of law under such circumstances. If I'm really sick, especially if it's because of some reason that could cause some embarrassment, then I wouldn't want everyone to know about it and I may say "feeling good" on my profile.