While the phone company does not eavesdrop on you to see if you are making business calls, they do charge a much higher rate (nearly double) for business service than they do for residential service. (Call your telco and check.) However, since they don't really check, hundreds of thousands of tele-commuters have residential phone lines that are being used for business purposes almost exclusively.
Here's the point: Business usage (phone, cable, whatever) CAN be more costly to the provider because these users will scream louder and demand quicker restoration of service when something goes wrong (line failure due to snowstorm, flooding, you name it). They also threaten to sue for lost business revenues due to the company's failure to restore said service in what they think is a timely manner. Residential customers don't bring that baggage.
So, they don't really care if you USE the line for business, because you won't be able to file suit as in the case above -- according to the TOS you weren't supposed to be using it for that purpose anyway. BUT, if you want them to treat your service as an essential component of running your business, you have to pay business rates...which is not wholly unfair IMHO.
that's gotta be one of the best trolls i've ever read...i almost fell out of my chair laughing when i got to the windows update part, and the shared cable connection is a nice touch:-D
Hehe. Don't really disagree with most of that, except that I think DAOC's RvsR is not nearly as flawed as you make it out to be. The balance problem IMHO is not so much one of inequality between realms or classes, as it is a matter of more good PvsP players end up in Midgard than anywhere else, because the PVPers always flock to the perceived evil or cool side. Also the game has been up for less than 60 days. After 60 days, EQ was still fighting major lag problems and bugs.
However, that doesn't change my original point: Lineage is miles behind even EQ, and no one other than a US gaming company has turned out a decent MMORPG yet. TR does sound interesting and I didn't say anything negative about it. It is of course, being built by a US company with US coders that happens to have merged with an Asian one, so I don't see how that's contrary to my original point...
I think you are right in your comments for the most part...pride doth goeth before the fall...
HOWEVER, in this specific case you are wrong. I have played Lineage, and while it may be all the rage in a country where people find their way into someone else's house to rent computer time by the hour, frankly, the game sucks by the standards of AC, EQ, or the new MMORPG king, Dark Age of Camelot. You will note that LB was kind of reserved in his praise...sounded more like someone being a good corporate citizen while biding his time until the completion of Tabula Rasa.
Recently, a Norwegian company named Funcom also made a big splash on the scene with a game called Anarchy Online, and then quickly began fading into the background as their game was plagued by latency issues, over-ambitious graphics, terrible maintenance and bug resolution, and horrendous customer relations. Meanwhile, Mythic has done nothing but succeed with Dark Age since launch.
While you may be right in the long run, right now, US game companies have this market cornered in North America and Europe because they are making better product, not because of entrenched positions. Lineage is at least two years behind Dark Age IMHO.
I find the timing of this film to be very suspicious.
Oh, yeah. Let's see they made the first movie last year and got better ratings for it than anything they've ever aired on the Sci-Fi Channel. Ummmm...perhaps the fact that they are in business to make money, and they do that by selling advertising, which is driven by ratings would have something to do with it?
Why look for a complicated conspiracy theory when the facts of the matter point to a very simple explanation. I won't even go into the fact that your analogy is ridiculous...
On the cutting edge again I see...follow this link to the preview dated 10/25/01 - which is almost exactly the same article as the review. The review has a bit better writing and imagery...Talk about recycling editorial!
Hehe - Yeah, they charge $39.95 for 768Kbps and $29.95 for 512Kbps, and the modem is supposed to govern the max speed of your connection. BUT, in practice, you can far exceed that 512 number (which is kind of a guesstimate setting) in Windows by applying a couple of tweaks that can be found here. As soon as I applied this stuff, I got about a 15% increase in my download speed...
The tweaking is easy stuff and it is worth 15 minutes of work. Don't let the man keep you down with false bandwidth caps! =D
I guess I'm lucky...I've had a cable modem through Charter for two over two years now, and outside of a hellacious week brought on by Code Red running rampant across idiot's machines, it has been more reliable than my dial-up account ever was. Bandwidth loss due to too many people on the network is a function of the cable company underestimating the number of subscribers on one hub. Half of my neighborhood is on the service, and I never seem to get less than 250Kbps even during peak day hours. At 8PM, I usually have 400 - 600Kbps. And I get all of this for $29.95 per month plus I get a 10% discount off my cable bill.
Seeing as how I would have to pay AOHell $21.95 for a lousy 56Kbps at best, why in the world would I ever go back to dial-up? To save $8 a month? Not only would I have to be out of work, I would have to be out of my mind...
just make sure that Yahoo! France is a separate legal entity not owned or operated by Yahoo! here in the US. Then, the assets in France could not be seized in response to actions by the US web site (as long as the French site is in compliance - which it was). Perhaps, this is already the case...
I'm not sure I see the distinction here...Since corporate money drives most Federal policy-making anyway, what will really change?
Companies also don't care about human beings...
NASA does? Any huge bureaucracy does? Tell it to the astronauts who burned to death in that Apollo rocket while sitting on the launch pad.
Can I draw a possibly stretched parallel here for a moment? The exploration/colonization of the Americas (North, South and Central) was originally in the hands of big government agencies in England, Spain, Portugal, France and Holland. Checking the historic record, we find that they killed off a whole bunch of people (native as well as their own), failed miserably as often as they succeeded, and generally created an enormous mess which the world is still trying to clean up centuries later. The most successful feats of the time were pulled off by individuals who were motivated primarily by personal glory (Columbus, Magellan, Hudson, et. al.) and were willing to make any sort of personal sacrifice to write their names in history books.
NASA no longer has that spirit. Its primary motivation is keeping its budget intact, and its management is seeking to keep its power base. Want to explore space in the next 50 years? Take the project out of government hands and put it in the hands of companies that are driven by individuals who are highly motivated to succeed. They will find ways to get the job done. Maybe some people will die...I for one would happily climb in the first rocket to Mars EVEN if you told me there was a 25% chance I would be killed before I got there.
Don't get me wrong - I don't think money spent on space exploration is a waste. I am a huge proponent of a continuing space program, and an even more aggressive one if possible.
HOWEVER, I have done a little contract work for NASA here and there, and they are nothing but one huge bureaucracy with a history of mismanagement. (Much like the DOD, et. al.) Throwing them more money just makes them think that mistakes, bad fiscal management, and scores of incompetent middle managers is A-OK with everyone and business should go on as usual.
I don't want any funding cut...but I do want them to act a little more like a business instead of a public works project. Either that, or let's start handing out R & D grants to people who can actually put the money to work effectively and efficiently. You can't say a project will cost $8 billion/year and then spend $10 billion/year and defer the extra $2 billion till five years down the road. What happens when five years go by and you now have to face the fact that you have spent $2 billion of your budget before you have even done one thing?
Every gamer worth his salt knows that graphic card companies have been doing this for years. Voodoo cards were always the best Quake FR cards, but when you tested them on complex flight sims like Jane's, they were beaten regularly by Nvidia even back in Voodoo 2 days.
Bottom line is that everybody does this. If you are supposedly savvy enough to be comparing benchmarks in the first place, then you should also be savvy enough to know that benchmarking only one game is inconclusive. Unless of course, all you do is play Quake 3...in which case, it is perfectly reasonable to select a video card based solely on its performance in that benchmark.
Gaming magazines (like PC Gamer) benchmark video cards on a slew of games in order to measure performance against all the major 3D engines. What's more, they run the tests at resolutions from 640x480 all the way up to 1600x1200, at 16 bit and 32 bit color. If you're using benchmarks to make a purchase decision, you have to look at all the engines you want to run, and at the resolutions you like to run. Only then are benchmark numbers a good guide.
"We're equating ease of access with privacy, and to me they're two different animals. Either a record is private or it's not."
While I am irked that they are making it too easy to get at some of this personal data, the guy has an interesting point. The real problem here isn't online accessibility -- it's accessibility by anyone. The "practical obscurity" notion has some merit, but IMHO, I am rather miffed to find out that some of this information is available to any bozo who strolls down to a county records office with a few crumbs of data about me to begin with.
What makes us think it's a good idea to allow access to things like the names of crime victims anyway? Anybody who throws my voter registration info in a database with nothing but my name and birthdate to protect it is getting sued. This kind of thing should be opt-in only!
No...probable cause relates to search and seizure, not arrest and holding people in prison without a bail hearing.
...they arrested him (suspended his account) and then released him on bail.
No, they made him sign a statement which was, in effect, an admission of guilt. Bail is granted prior to the defendant making any plea, guilty or not guilty.
...remeber [sic] that you are trusting the girl who swears her boyfriend didn't do it.
You will note that my post said: "Nothing that I can see if the article is true." I freely acknowledge that this story may be completely false, and my post is based on the assumption that it is not. I wholeheartedly agree that there is a very good possibility that she is a) lying to protect herself or her boyfriend OR b) knows only what her boyfriend told her and that was a lie.
People are arrested and spend days in jail before the matter of their guilt is resolved all the time. That's what the police do every day: when they think so one has committed a crime, they arrest him. The alternative is to let the person go free, and chances are he'll disappear.
Ummm...that's true; guilt is not resolved until after a trial takes place. However, bail hearings are granted prior to guilt being resolved and there are minimum levels of evidence required to hold a person in confinement until charges are brought before a judge. If the incarceration has no sound basis, you can easily sue for Wrongful Arrest. The police CANNOT just arrest someone and hold them because they THINK he committed a crime...not in the US anyway. Picture this scenario:
Cop1: See that guy there?
Cop2: Yeah, what about him? Cop1: He's [insert racial or ethnic epithet here] so he's probably up to something illegal. (Translation - He was on USENET/IRC/GNUTELLA) Cop2: Yeah. Let's go arrest him.
ANNNNNNHHH. Can you say "Kiss that badge goodbye!"
What can you do in the case related in this article? Nothing that I can see if the article is true. They could have shut down his access for months if they wanted too, and I don't see where he would have had any recourse. No laws granting him access to the evidence against him, no opportunity to refute it, etc. "Your pipe is cut off. We will consider restoring it when and if we feel like doing so."
Federal officials said they were unsuccessful in talks with Roche to lower the prices the country paid for nelfinavir.
and
...the health ministry now spends $82 million per year on the nelfinavir, in sum using up 28 percent of its annual budget to treat AIDS patients..
and
Similar negotiations with other large drug companies, such as Merck, have successfully reduced the prices of medications, the ministry said...
So, it's not like they didn't try to negotiate a reasonable price. I wasn't there, so I don't claim to know whether or not the parties negotiated in good faith. But this is not a new drug, and I sincerely doubt (although I don't know for sure) that Roche is still in the red on this one. I think they have more than recouped any R&D costs by now, and should be willing to negotiate on price with an underdeveloped country that is trying to provide social welfare programs.
At the risk of being slammed for defending M$ (I'm not - just pointing how incorrect most of these posts are.)...
This is NOT illegal or even fraudulent behavior. According to the article:
"If people express support for Microsoft, they are sent letters to sign, along with handstamped, pre-addressed envelopes to their state attorney general, to President Bush, and to their members of Congress."
While this is certainly misleading in the manner they are doing it, it is far from fraudulent. How does this differ from all the other form letters that people send their congressmen every day? Throughout the Sklyarov case, there have been dozens of form letters out there written by people who encourage you to copy them and send them to your congressman, to Adobe, and to anyone else of importance. When you copy someone else's well-written letter and send it as if it were yours aren't you just saying that you agree with their sentiments and don't need to restate the same thing in your own words? What's the difference between this and signing a carefully worded petition? Isn't that a case of allowing a good writer to craft a statement for you?
While there is no question that this is a more refined way of doing it -- personalizing the letters a bit -- no one is claiming that M$ is sending out these letters directly using other people's names. They are sending a letter to someone, who is then signing the letter and mailing it, thus saying that they agree with the sentiments the letter expresses...just like a petition. While I certainly agree that they are a bunch of sleazes willing to spend millions of marketing dollars on making themselves look like our friends, I don't see how this could be called fraud in any sense of the word.
Since the offending party is a) costing you time and money and b) harming the performance of your web server and/or network (also costing you money), I would say he is committing a crime against you. Therefore, you would be well within you rights in proceeding with a Citizen's Arrest against the offending server and remanding it into custody via root access.;-)
But seriously, do you think it's possible to bring a class action suit against the owners/operators of servers that still haven't downloaded the patch? They are, through their negligence, causing grave economic damage to the rest of us...Anybody out there think you can take a log of all the servers bombing you, do reverse lookups, and file a lawsuit in court? Hehehe...I'm actually surprised no one has tried this yet.
First of all, record labels already own the copyrights on the majority of the music out there - they don't have to renegotiate anything with anybody. (In case you missed it, that has been one of Courtney Love's recurring themes throughout her tirades on the record labels.) In the case of freelance articles, the writer owns the copyright and the publisher negotiated publication rights -- the writer still holds the copyright. Check your CD collection for copyrights and see who they belong to...
More importantly, the point of the article was that the Supreme Court (remember those guys? final arbiters on the constitutionality of laws, etc.?) recently wrote an opinion that indicates that the copyright holder cannot refuse to make the material available if it might create a hole in the public record. And that is an important point...because it means that those nine people in black robes might say that the big 5 must make their music available in electronic format to a central repository of such material, and that if they are unable to negotiate a proper royalty with that organization, an arbitrator will do it for them. I don't think it's gonna' revive Napster's sorry butt, but it's a very important ruling just the same...
that's right...it's much easier to sit on a message board and masturbate intellectually than it is to do something...write letters to your congressmen...that's nice, safe and totally ineffectual...
somebody gives you a reality check and you guys think it's irrelevant because it doesn't fit with the geek intellectual picture you would rather imagine is the true world while you're downloading another mp3...too bad for the world that the best hope of overturning the dmca rests with/. users who think if it can't be done from a keyboard, it's too much trouble...:-P
The man infuriates me by his broad strokes of generalism trying to paint a picture more inspired by a need for sensationalism than a real critique or social commentary.
That sums up the reasons for my katz-bashing quite nicely...I agree with the entire thesis of his story and his portrayal of the incident, but comparing this to the "Pentagon Papers" is typical of his outlandish exageration when he's trying to make a point. Mr. Katz has some good ideas to share, but he insists on doing so by writing editorial more worthy of a Marketing Department copywriter than a real, unbiased journalist.
And that type of writing my friends, is why so many of us bash him every single time he writes an article...the insinuation that we cannot see through the hype to the real truth of the matter, but must be led to water like cattle is an insult to his audience.
While I agree that Deus Ex was a pretty awesome FPS to play, it suffered from two incredibly large flaws:
and...
Anybody who releases a FPS like Deus Ex with no multi-player support in this day and age is mentally deficient and can be safely referred to as "The Remains."
I challenge you to identify a single FPS made in the last three years that has been hugely successful (financially - I don't really care whether you liked it or not) without multi-player capability. You say you are a big player of FPS games...then why do you keep giving me the following examples?
The Sims, Roller Coaster Tycoon, and Simcity 3K, Age of Empires 2.
The only game you supplied that is even somewhat an FPS is Mech Warrior 4, and that is somewhat unique in that it had a strong customer base from earlier, single player only versions. Hey, I like a good strategy or sim game as much as the next guy, and to be frank with you, I have never played any of them multi-player. You're right -- they are generally much better as stand alones.
But when it comes to running around with a first-person viewpoint and shooting the crap out of people -- AI sucks. Bots make lousy opponents because they are predictable in their behavior. The only way to make them worthy opponents is to beef them up with impenetrable armor, blazing rates of fire, and extra damage weapons. That's why there is no substitute for a human opponent who hides in a dark corner behind some boxes and hits you with a burst of fire when you run buy him. I LOVED Deus Ex...for three days. That's why I was so disappointed that it took them a freakin' year to add multi-player support. That indicated to me that they hadn't even thought multi-player through until after the game was released...and in this day and age, that (in my mind) is unconscionable.
Slashdot Mirror
Here's the point: Business usage (phone, cable, whatever) CAN be more costly to the provider because these users will scream louder and demand quicker restoration of service when something goes wrong (line failure due to snowstorm, flooding, you name it). They also threaten to sue for lost business revenues due to the company's failure to restore said service in what they think is a timely manner. Residential customers don't bring that baggage.
So, they don't really care if you USE the line for business, because you won't be able to file suit as in the case above -- according to the TOS you weren't supposed to be using it for that purpose anyway. BUT, if you want them to treat your service as an essential component of running your business, you have to pay business rates...which is not wholly unfair IMHO.
that's gotta be one of the best trolls i've ever read...i almost fell out of my chair laughing when i got to the windows update part, and the shared cable connection is a nice touch :-D
However, that doesn't change my original point: Lineage is miles behind even EQ, and no one other than a US gaming company has turned out a decent MMORPG yet. TR does sound interesting and I didn't say anything negative about it. It is of course, being built by a US company with US coders that happens to have merged with an Asian one, so I don't see how that's contrary to my original point...
HOWEVER, in this specific case you are wrong. I have played Lineage, and while it may be all the rage in a country where people find their way into someone else's house to rent computer time by the hour, frankly, the game sucks by the standards of AC, EQ, or the new MMORPG king, Dark Age of Camelot. You will note that LB was kind of reserved in his praise...sounded more like someone being a good corporate citizen while biding his time until the completion of Tabula Rasa.
Recently, a Norwegian company named Funcom also made a big splash on the scene with a game called Anarchy Online, and then quickly began fading into the background as their game was plagued by latency issues, over-ambitious graphics, terrible maintenance and bug resolution, and horrendous customer relations. Meanwhile, Mythic has done nothing but succeed with Dark Age since launch.
While you may be right in the long run, right now, US game companies have this market cornered in North America and Europe because they are making better product, not because of entrenched positions. Lineage is at least two years behind Dark Age IMHO.
Oh, yeah. Let's see they made the first movie last year and got better ratings for it than anything they've ever aired on the Sci-Fi Channel. Ummmm...perhaps the fact that they are in business to make money, and they do that by selling advertising, which is driven by ratings would have something to do with it?
Why look for a complicated conspiracy theory when the facts of the matter point to a very simple explanation. I won't even go into the fact that your analogy is ridiculous...
On the cutting edge again I see...follow this link to the preview dated 10/25/01 - which is almost exactly the same article as the review. The review has a bit better writing and imagery...Talk about recycling editorial!
The tweaking is easy stuff and it is worth 15 minutes of work. Don't let the man keep you down with false bandwidth caps! =D
Seeing as how I would have to pay AOHell $21.95 for a lousy 56Kbps at best, why in the world would I ever go back to dial-up? To save $8 a month? Not only would I have to be out of work, I would have to be out of my mind...
NT
just make sure that Yahoo! France is a separate legal entity not owned or operated by Yahoo! here in the US. Then, the assets in France could not be seized in response to actions by the US web site (as long as the French site is in compliance - which it was). Perhaps, this is already the case...
NASA does? Any huge bureaucracy does? Tell it to the astronauts who burned to death in that Apollo rocket while sitting on the launch pad.
Can I draw a possibly stretched parallel here for a moment? The exploration/colonization of the Americas (North, South and Central) was originally in the hands of big government agencies in England, Spain, Portugal, France and Holland. Checking the historic record, we find that they killed off a whole bunch of people (native as well as their own), failed miserably as often as they succeeded, and generally created an enormous mess which the world is still trying to clean up centuries later. The most successful feats of the time were pulled off by individuals who were motivated primarily by personal glory (Columbus, Magellan, Hudson, et. al.) and were willing to make any sort of personal sacrifice to write their names in history books.
NASA no longer has that spirit. Its primary motivation is keeping its budget intact, and its management is seeking to keep its power base. Want to explore space in the next 50 years? Take the project out of government hands and put it in the hands of companies that are driven by individuals who are highly motivated to succeed. They will find ways to get the job done. Maybe some people will die...I for one would happily climb in the first rocket to Mars EVEN if you told me there was a 25% chance I would be killed before I got there.
HOWEVER, I have done a little contract work for NASA here and there, and they are nothing but one huge bureaucracy with a history of mismanagement. (Much like the DOD, et. al.) Throwing them more money just makes them think that mistakes, bad fiscal management, and scores of incompetent middle managers is A-OK with everyone and business should go on as usual.
I don't want any funding cut...but I do want them to act a little more like a business instead of a public works project. Either that, or let's start handing out R & D grants to people who can actually put the money to work effectively and efficiently. You can't say a project will cost $8 billion/year and then spend $10 billion/year and defer the extra $2 billion till five years down the road. What happens when five years go by and you now have to face the fact that you have spent $2 billion of your budget before you have even done one thing?
Bottom line is that everybody does this. If you are supposedly savvy enough to be comparing benchmarks in the first place, then you should also be savvy enough to know that benchmarking only one game is inconclusive. Unless of course, all you do is play Quake 3...in which case, it is perfectly reasonable to select a video card based solely on its performance in that benchmark.
Gaming magazines (like PC Gamer) benchmark video cards on a slew of games in order to measure performance against all the major 3D engines. What's more, they run the tests at resolutions from 640x480 all the way up to 1600x1200, at 16 bit and 32 bit color. If you're using benchmarks to make a purchase decision, you have to look at all the engines you want to run, and at the resolutions you like to run. Only then are benchmark numbers a good guide.
While I am irked that they are making it too easy to get at some of this personal data, the guy has an interesting point. The real problem here isn't online accessibility -- it's accessibility by anyone. The "practical obscurity" notion has some merit, but IMHO, I am rather miffed to find out that some of this information is available to any bozo who strolls down to a county records office with a few crumbs of data about me to begin with.
What makes us think it's a good idea to allow access to things like the names of crime victims anyway? Anybody who throws my voter registration info in a database with nothing but my name and birthdate to protect it is getting sued. This kind of thing should be opt-in only!
No...probable cause relates to search and seizure, not arrest and holding people in prison without a bail hearing.
No, they made him sign a statement which was, in effect, an admission of guilt. Bail is granted prior to the defendant making any plea, guilty or not guilty.
You will note that my post said: "Nothing that I can see if the article is true." I freely acknowledge that this story may be completely false, and my post is based on the assumption that it is not. I wholeheartedly agree that there is a very good possibility that she is a) lying to protect herself or her boyfriend OR b) knows only what her boyfriend told her and that was a lie.
Ummm...that's true; guilt is not resolved until after a trial takes place. However, bail hearings are granted prior to guilt being resolved and there are minimum levels of evidence required to hold a person in confinement until charges are brought before a judge. If the incarceration has no sound basis, you can easily sue for Wrongful Arrest. The police CANNOT just arrest someone and hold them because they THINK he committed a crime...not in the US anyway. Picture this scenario:
ANNNNNNHHH. Can you say "Kiss that badge goodbye!"
What can you do in the case related in this article? Nothing that I can see if the article is true. They could have shut down his access for months if they wanted too, and I don't see where he would have had any recourse. No laws granting him access to the evidence against him, no opportunity to refute it, etc. "Your pipe is cut off. We will consider restoring it when and if we feel like doing so."
This is NOT illegal or even fraudulent behavior. According to the article:
While this is certainly misleading in the manner they are doing it, it is far from fraudulent. How does this differ from all the other form letters that people send their congressmen every day? Throughout the Sklyarov case, there have been dozens of form letters out there written by people who encourage you to copy them and send them to your congressman, to Adobe, and to anyone else of importance. When you copy someone else's well-written letter and send it as if it were yours aren't you just saying that you agree with their sentiments and don't need to restate the same thing in your own words? What's the difference between this and signing a carefully worded petition? Isn't that a case of allowing a good writer to craft a statement for you?
While there is no question that this is a more refined way of doing it -- personalizing the letters a bit -- no one is claiming that M$ is sending out these letters directly using other people's names. They are sending a letter to someone, who is then signing the letter and mailing it, thus saying that they agree with the sentiments the letter expresses...just like a petition. While I certainly agree that they are a bunch of sleazes willing to spend millions of marketing dollars on making themselves look like our friends, I don't see how this could be called fraud in any sense of the word.
no text i say!
Since the offending party is a) costing you time and money and b) harming the performance of your web server and/or network (also costing you money), I would say he is committing a crime against you. Therefore, you would be well within you rights in proceeding with a Citizen's Arrest against the offending server and remanding it into custody via root access. ;-)
But seriously, do you think it's possible to bring a class action suit against the owners/operators of servers that still haven't downloaded the patch? They are, through their negligence, causing grave economic damage to the rest of us...Anybody out there think you can take a log of all the servers bombing you, do reverse lookups, and file a lawsuit in court? Hehehe...I'm actually surprised no one has tried this yet.
Just thinking out loud...
More importantly, the point of the article was that the Supreme Court (remember those guys? final arbiters on the constitutionality of laws, etc.?) recently wrote an opinion that indicates that the copyright holder cannot refuse to make the material available if it might create a hole in the public record. And that is an important point...because it means that those nine people in black robes might say that the big 5 must make their music available in electronic format to a central repository of such material, and that if they are unable to negotiate a proper royalty with that organization, an arbitrator will do it for them. I don't think it's gonna' revive Napster's sorry butt, but it's a very important ruling just the same...
somebody gives you a reality check and you guys think it's irrelevant because it doesn't fit with the geek intellectual picture you would rather imagine is the true world while you're downloading another mp3...too bad for the world that the best hope of overturning the dmca rests with /. users who think if it can't be done from a keyboard, it's too much trouble... :-P
That sums up the reasons for my katz-bashing quite nicely...I agree with the entire thesis of his story and his portrayal of the incident, but comparing this to the "Pentagon Papers" is typical of his outlandish exageration when he's trying to make a point. Mr. Katz has some good ideas to share, but he insists on doing so by writing editorial more worthy of a Marketing Department copywriter than a real, unbiased journalist.
And that type of writing my friends, is why so many of us bash him every single time he writes an article...the insinuation that we cannot see through the hype to the real truth of the matter, but must be led to water like cattle is an insult to his audience.
Jon Katz's comparison to the Pentagon Papers is equally out of proportion...
and...
Anybody who releases a FPS like Deus Ex with no multi-player support in this day and age is mentally deficient and can be safely referred to as "The Remains."
I challenge you to identify a single FPS made in the last three years that has been hugely successful (financially - I don't really care whether you liked it or not) without multi-player capability. You say you are a big player of FPS games...then why do you keep giving me the following examples?
The Sims, Roller Coaster Tycoon, and Simcity 3K, Age of Empires 2.
The only game you supplied that is even somewhat an FPS is Mech Warrior 4, and that is somewhat unique in that it had a strong customer base from earlier, single player only versions. Hey, I like a good strategy or sim game as much as the next guy, and to be frank with you, I have never played any of them multi-player. You're right -- they are generally much better as stand alones.
But when it comes to running around with a first-person viewpoint and shooting the crap out of people -- AI sucks. Bots make lousy opponents because they are predictable in their behavior. The only way to make them worthy opponents is to beef them up with impenetrable armor, blazing rates of fire, and extra damage weapons. That's why there is no substitute for a human opponent who hides in a dark corner behind some boxes and hits you with a burst of fire when you run buy him. I LOVED Deus Ex...for three days. That's why I was so disappointed that it took them a freakin' year to add multi-player support. That indicated to me that they hadn't even thought multi-player through until after the game was released...and in this day and age, that (in my mind) is unconscionable.