I'd like to see the actual code that is forcing the crash. I'd say there's a 50/50 chance that they're hitting an assert. The other 50% is that they're completely full of crap, and they got lucky that this causes a crash instead of an exploit.
I guess it's a matter of taste. If you swap those two movies in your comment, you'd have a pretty good summary of my opinion of them. Additionally, the scenarios in Chasing Amy could only ever happen to an elite group of people so far out of touch with reality they hardly exist. Clerks, on the other hand, could be real if not a bit exaggerated.
It holds that if I buy a PS3 in Japan, take it to France and sell it there - Sony believes they have the right to sue me for that. Do you agree with that?
Well that depends. Did you sign a contract with Sony agreeing you wouldn't do that?
I seriously doubt that Sony thinks they can sue *you* for doing that. If you had a reseller agreement (contract) with them, that would be another story entirely.
You mean you found a store with less than 50 "Core" 360s in stock? I wasn't aware *anybody* bought those. There always seem to be more on the shelf than even PS2s.
Soon we will be able to meaningfully express the number of times you have posted this as a percentage of the number of comments in the Slashdot database.
What they do does protect profits, but so does banning shoplifting.
It protects profits indirectly. Giving a company additional copyrights to protect their bottom line is direct. (I broke your analogy anyway, without using the example you gave.) A more apt analogy, though less obvious, would be banning derogatory comments about the store's merchandise to other customers.
I have a right to control how my property is used, and one rule Blizzard has made regarding their property is that when playing on their server, you may not use the WoWGlider.
How does that have anything to do with copyright? You are correct. They can contractually disallow the use of this tool on their servers, but using it is not a copyright violation.
This isn't about loss of revenue; this is about basic property rights.
No matter how you look at this, that's a total load of crap. This has nothing, nothing to do with property rights.
Look at it this way: If I say I'll let you use my computer so long as you don't use it to read Shakespearean plays, then when you use my computer to read Shakespearean plays, you're violating my rights.
No, if I agree, than I'm violating your contract. Not your rights.
There is a difference between violation of a contract (copyright license) and violation of copyright. You are talking about one, and the article summary is talking about the other.
The rest of us can tell the difference between well encoded 1080i content and upscaled 480p content. I'm very sorry for you that you can't.
(And I still think that your real problem is that your television does a crappy job of downscaling 1080i to 720p, and that's why you mistakenly believe your upscaled DVDs look just as good.)
Sorry, but if I can't read and write to whatever memory I want on my computer whenever I want, it's not a general purpose computer. Blizzard has to find a way to prevent cheating *without* limiting that ability through draconian laws.
Furthermore, if people *do* figure out how to cheat, the only remedy that Blizzard should have against those people is to ban them from the game. They shouldn't be allowed security through legal intimidation. If cheating loses them revenue, it's not the fault of the cheater; it's the fault of their security hole.
I'd say that's a false dichotomy. You don't have to side with cheaters in order to oppose expansion of copyright.
You're right, and I fully support any technological or self-contained countermeasures that Blizzard wishes to impose. I was just pointing out the absurdity of the original poster's absolutism.
Sorry, but if we have to pick between expansion of copyrights and some people cheating at a stupid game, I'm going to side with the cheaters. Preventing cheating in an online game is not a cause worthy of limiting access to general purpose computing for.
And on top of that you have the whole xbox live thing that is raking in cash re-releasing games that you can download to play on emulators free minus the slick ranking and online features. Am I the only one that thinks the majority of their content is overpriced? Maybe I'm just cheap, but it seems like Microsft is trying to nickle and dime gamers out the wazoo.
Here's what you can do.
Don't buy an Xbox. Don't subscribe to Live. Don't buy the over-priced add-on content. Just don't do it.
That's all it takes. It'll be over sooner than you think.
I actually have a pet-peeve against age based decisions. I think you should send your kid to school when they're ready. You, as a parent, should be doing everything in your power to make sure your kid is ready for school as early as possible...
Just earlier today I was reading the paper mat they put on the floor of my car during inspection. It said "For safety, children under 12 should ride in the back seat of the car". Do they think that people are too stupid to understand height and weight based recommendations? What if you have a short 12 year old? It pisses me off when things are boiled down to an age based rule-of-thumb because it is either too much effort to make a determination based on the factors which actually matter, or because the person communicating the rule assumes that people are too stupid to understand the complexities of the issue.
Anyway, I guess what I'm trying to say is that I agree.
Are you sure you don't mean 'best gift to yourself'?
Seriously, the kid is barely going to remember that extra year. Parents insisting on the maintenance of childhood ignorance, er... innocence are almost universally (and usually subconsciously) being really, really selfish. Reading comprehension and a sense of independence are the best gifts you can offer, but you probably don't see that because you're too afraid your baby won't need you anymore. Boo hoo.
I think the more disturbing trend is in the enterprise server environment. Until a few years ago, this was a Microsoft-free zone. Nobody took Microsoft seriously enough to install Windows on systems the "mattered". Now, Server 2003 and MS-SQL are in the door... They're not the dominant platform by any means, but they are conspicuously present, and the number of windows servers in the enterprise is growing.
The Comcast business service, like practically every business ADSL connection, has no SLA. In my experience wit it (I had it for a year and then switched to FiOS. I had business DSL for six years before that) the reliability was terrible, the statics were on about half the blacklists from day 1, and the speeds were the same that you would expect from a residential cable hookup. All that for twice what business DSL costs, and three times what 20mbit/5mbit FiOS costs.
They did comp me days with service outages and brownouts, but I'd rather have my server online than have a credit. And you're right. I didn't stand for it. As soon as they weren't the only sub $500/month game in town I switched.
Why would you dismiss what I'm telling you as "bullshit"? What experience do you have that makes your knowledge of it superior to mine?
I can't say I've talked to hundreds of targeted people... My sample size is much smaller. I've talked to six.
Every single one of them had engaged in file sharing. All of them. And they admitted it. That makes it hard for me to believe that you could have talked to hundreds and never met a single accused person that was actually guilty unless you make a point to seek out only the wrongly accused. That is why I'm skeptical.
The RIAA's "investigation" tells them nothing other than the name and address of a person who paid for an internet access account. They do not know, and cannot know from their investigation, what person set up a shared files folder, as their expert witness admits. (I bet you never even bothered to read the transcript of his deposition.) Why would it surprise you to learn that such an investigation produces more innocent people than culpable people?
I don't deny that such a rudimentary method would produce a lot of false accusations... But it seems to me it would produce a lot of valid accusations too.
In most households the person who pays for the internet access account is the least likely person to have engaged in p2p file sharing
Ok, if you said 'many', I'd agree, but most? Come on... There are plenty of single or childless people in the world, and the "grandma" defense is insulting.
Slashdot Mirror
I'd like to see the actual code that is forcing the crash. I'd say there's a 50/50 chance that they're hitting an assert. The other 50% is that they're completely full of crap, and they got lucky that this causes a crash instead of an exploit.
I guess it's a matter of taste. If you swap those two movies in your comment, you'd have a pretty good summary of my opinion of them. Additionally, the scenarios in Chasing Amy could only ever happen to an elite group of people so far out of touch with reality they hardly exist. Clerks, on the other hand, could be real if not a bit exaggerated.
Well that depends. Did you sign a contract with Sony agreeing you wouldn't do that?
I seriously doubt that Sony thinks they can sue *you* for doing that. If you had a reseller agreement (contract) with them, that would be another story entirely.
You mean you found a store with less than 50 "Core" 360s in stock? I wasn't aware *anybody* bought those. There always seem to be more on the shelf than even PS2s.
You can still easily ignore the elite few that claim PS3 games cost $70.
If you save $5/day at 5% interest you will have significantly more money than that in 10 years. More than $23,000, actually
Soon we will be able to meaningfully express the number of times you have posted this as a percentage of the number of comments in the Slashdot database.
Yet still nobody agrees with you.
I'll think about it.
Good luck suing me when I "steal" your customers.
I use both. (My job and my gaming habit prevent me from ditching windows entirely)
Actually, I was assuming that Linux users were smart enough to know how to avoid the issues with Acrobat already.
It protects profits indirectly. Giving a company additional copyrights to protect their bottom line is direct. (I broke your analogy anyway, without using the example you gave.) A more apt analogy, though less obvious, would be banning derogatory comments about the store's merchandise to other customers.
How does that have anything to do with copyright? You are correct. They can contractually disallow the use of this tool on their servers, but using it is not a copyright violation.
No matter how you look at this, that's a total load of crap. This has nothing, nothing to do with property rights.
No, if I agree, than I'm violating your contract. Not your rights.
I have an easier solution.
Start->Run->Control Panel->Add & Remove programs
Select "Adobe Acrobat Reader"
Click "Uninstall"
Download FoxIt Reader 2.0
There are no good reasons to run Adobe Acrobat, and plenty of good reasons *not* to.
There is a difference between violation of a contract (copyright license) and violation of copyright. You are talking about one, and the article summary is talking about the other.
Here come the bad analogies.
Prosecuting theft is *not* protecting profits. It's protecting assets.
There is a big difference between loss of revenue and murder.
It is the government's job to protect against murder, while the government has no business protecting profits.
Blizard's remedies to cheating should be limited to what they have direct power to enforce.
I'm sorry if cheaters spoil your fun, but there are two parties involved in that cheating, and you're only paying one of them to prevent it.
Do you own stock in Faroudja or something?
Great. You can't tell. Here's a cookie.
The rest of us can tell the difference between well encoded 1080i content and upscaled 480p content. I'm very sorry for you that you can't.
(And I still think that your real problem is that your television does a crappy job of downscaling 1080i to 720p, and that's why you mistakenly believe your upscaled DVDs look just as good.)
Sorry, but if I can't read and write to whatever memory I want on my computer whenever I want, it's not a general purpose computer. Blizzard has to find a way to prevent cheating *without* limiting that ability through draconian laws.
Furthermore, if people *do* figure out how to cheat, the only remedy that Blizzard should have against those people is to ban them from the game. They shouldn't be allowed security through legal intimidation. If cheating loses them revenue, it's not the fault of the cheater; it's the fault of their security hole.
You're right, and I fully support any technological or self-contained countermeasures that Blizzard wishes to impose. I was just pointing out the absurdity of the original poster's absolutism.
Including grossly abusing the law?
Sorry, but if we have to pick between expansion of copyrights and some people cheating at a stupid game, I'm going to side with the cheaters. Preventing cheating in an online game is not a cause worthy of limiting access to general purpose computing for.
Here's what you can do.
Don't buy an Xbox. Don't subscribe to Live. Don't buy the over-priced add-on content. Just don't do it.
That's all it takes. It'll be over sooner than you think.
I actually have a pet-peeve against age based decisions. I think you should send your kid to school when they're ready. You, as a parent, should be doing everything in your power to make sure your kid is ready for school as early as possible...
Just earlier today I was reading the paper mat they put on the floor of my car during inspection. It said "For safety, children under 12 should ride in the back seat of the car". Do they think that people are too stupid to understand height and weight based recommendations? What if you have a short 12 year old? It pisses me off when things are boiled down to an age based rule-of-thumb because it is either too much effort to make a determination based on the factors which actually matter, or because the person communicating the rule assumes that people are too stupid to understand the complexities of the issue.
Anyway, I guess what I'm trying to say is that I agree.
Are you sure you don't mean 'best gift to yourself'?
Seriously, the kid is barely going to remember that extra year. Parents insisting on the maintenance of childhood ignorance, er... innocence are almost universally (and usually subconsciously) being really, really selfish. Reading comprehension and a sense of independence are the best gifts you can offer, but you probably don't see that because you're too afraid your baby won't need you anymore. Boo hoo.
I think the more disturbing trend is in the enterprise server environment. Until a few years ago, this was a Microsoft-free zone. Nobody took Microsoft seriously enough to install Windows on systems the "mattered". Now, Server 2003 and MS-SQL are in the door... They're not the dominant platform by any means, but they are conspicuously present, and the number of windows servers in the enterprise is growing.
How do you define "segments that matter"?
It's a networked device. They'd just put out a firmware update. Sorry to shatter your dreams.
It would be more interesting to find out what would happen if the key to the Sony standalone BluRay players was discovered.
The Comcast business service, like practically every business ADSL connection, has no SLA. In my experience wit it (I had it for a year and then switched to FiOS. I had business DSL for six years before that) the reliability was terrible, the statics were on about half the blacklists from day 1, and the speeds were the same that you would expect from a residential cable hookup. All that for twice what business DSL costs, and three times what 20mbit/5mbit FiOS costs.
They did comp me days with service outages and brownouts, but I'd rather have my server online than have a credit. And you're right. I didn't stand for it. As soon as they weren't the only sub $500/month game in town I switched.
I can't say I've talked to hundreds of targeted people... My sample size is much smaller. I've talked to six.
Every single one of them had engaged in file sharing. All of them. And they admitted it. That makes it hard for me to believe that you could have talked to hundreds and never met a single accused person that was actually guilty unless you make a point to seek out only the wrongly accused. That is why I'm skeptical.
I don't deny that such a rudimentary method would produce a lot of false accusations... But it seems to me it would produce a lot of valid accusations too.
Ok, if you said 'many', I'd agree, but most? Come on... There are plenty of single or childless people in the world, and the "grandma" defense is insulting.