> Unless the guy playing the baddies can just > drop random shit in on top of the player, that > is...
Actually, the "Invader" player has Spawn cards which they can play each turn to drop new monsters on the map in any area which the marines don't have line of sight to.
"You know that corner in the room you just went through, but can't see now because you're partways down the corridor? Well, there was (play) a Mancubus hiding there all along!"
I've played the game a couple of times now, but the random ammo system does kinda stink, and it's a little bit slow for something based on a fast-pased video game. Oh, and it's very, very hard for the marine players to win. Ever.
> So basically EA, fuck you. I'll take my $100 a > year that I would have spent on your products > and go to one of the two or three remaining > competitors left in console gaming. Or maybe > I'll go buy some basement-made games like > Uplink instead.
While you're still allowed to.
With Xbox 2 claimed to replace PCs, TCPA, the ballooning console market and the rising cost of games-capable PCs, it won't be long before it's impossible for any small studio to compete.
The cycle for new consoles is already around three years, which is too fast for many smaller firms to produce a game and have it available in time for the console to be current!
Alllrighty. Can we please stop with the "this isn't that good a deal" posts? If any of your firms you're talking about feel like coming down to the UK and laying down cable, then we can start comparing.
Broadband firms in the UK are expensive because all the ADSL local loops in the country are owned by British Telecom. Broadband companies have to pay to access these. And, wouldn't you just know it, British Telecom offer a broadband service as well, and guess how much they charge themselves for local loop (hint: not much)
If there was one law that would sort this out quickly, it must be that a human negotiator must be present or contactable when contracts are issued.
Having a legally binding contract presented by a machine, which can't be argued or negotiated with and which has no interest in getting you to accept, is a ridiculous and one-sided situation.
I think the argument is more that this type of thing represents a lack of consideration. (Ie, Blizzard don't have to GUARANTEE letting you onto the game - and thus could get away with not doing it at all under the EULA - but you don't get to ignore YOUR side of the bargain whenever you feel like it)
Re:Question isn't just "Enforcable?", but "Provabl
on
The Basics of EULAs
·
· Score: 1
> Then Blizzard sues them for copyright > infringement. By default, you don't actually > have the right to run Blizzard's software. > It's copyrighted, which means you can't copy > it (for example, to your hard drive during > install), without their permission. So if Joe > never read or agreed to the EULA, then > he "copied" the software without permission.
Only two problems:
a) only the EULA says that he licenses the software rather than buying it. Since the store sold it to him as "a game" (rather than "a license to play a game"), he could argue he thought he had purchased the game and had the right to use it.
b) if the CD has autorun that kicks off the installer, but that somehow didn't present the EULA, then Blizzard invited him to copy the software onto his hard disk rather than him doing it off his own bat.
> It certainly has nothing to do with the > hundreds of thousands of hours of timely, > intense, and cutting-edge creative energy put > into these games by teams of dozens and dozens > of talented programmers, artists, musicians, > and sound designers.
Because the time-sink in Eve is even worse than the time-sink in other MMORPGs.
The time-sink in most MMO games is having to level up and fighting things on the way. The time sink in Eve is *WARPING*. Yep, you click on a star system to go to and then you have to sit and wait - often for hours on end - while watching a warp animation until you get there.
Why not go do something else? Because - here's the brilliant bit - you can be knocked out of warp at any time for a fight, and if you're not at the keyboard at that time, you're gonna die.
> Unfortunately, these people are what make > MMORPGs fun. You get rid of the powergamer, > and you get rid of the idea that someone can > make a name for themself in a virtual world. > And, IMHO, making a name for yourself in a > virtual world is what MMORPGs are all about.
And that's why, IMHO, the MMORPG genre as it is is fundamentally broken.
As you've said, the key extra value of a MMORPG is the ability to make a make for yourself, or to stand out, or to be better than others in a virtual world. None of the other vaunted advantages of MMO games are actually unique to them. Team play? Ordinary (non-massive) multiplayer games have that; on Diablo 2, say, the process of finding a team in the chat lobby then creating a game is identical to that of finding a group then going hunting in a MMO. Persistent world? Any single player game with a save function has that.
No, what everyone wants in an MMO is to be better than the crowd. But obviously, not everyone can have that. And if those people who can't have it decide to quit, then there is no crowd left for the others to be better than.
Raph Koster gave a talk called "Small Worlds" (slides are available on the net somewhere, but I can't recall the URL I'm afraid) where he basically justified levelling treadmills in these terms. His claim was that if "betterness" was distributed in any way other than treadmills, then the 10% of players who were most attuned to that distribution method (most skilled, richest, cleverest, etc.) would consume 90% of the "betterness" and no-one else would play. Treadmills are thus the best method because a) anyone can do them, b) the people who lose out are the people who spend least time playing the game and therefore logically should care least about their character within it, and c) it ties obtaining "betterness" to activity that makes money for the MMO firm.
The example he used of a case where rare individuals got all the "betterness" was Tiger Woods. Yet it's worth noting that the existance of Tiger Woods does not prevent other people from playing and enjoying golf. But the claim that, as long as Tiger Woods exists, going to play golf at a massive tournament with a crowd (at which Tiger will be playing) offers no more, or even less, entertainment than playing with your own local club (with no crowd, but also no Tiger). Which makes a lot more sense.
AFAIK the only MMO which has absolutely zero treadmilling is Planetside, which is also IMHO *seriously* underrated.
> That the register has a lot of cash is not > published by the defendent in the newspaper, > it's given to the person in privacy for the > express purpose of committing crime; in fact > if the information were public, which > lokitorrent certainly is, it would be useless.
Umm... you mean you [i]didn't know[/i] there was cash in the register at your local supermarket? Without needing to be told? Without even going there?
It's a joke based on an old classic RPG called Paranoia.
Security codes were assigned based on the UV spectrum, with Infrared being the lowest, and Ultraviolet the highest. The clothing and similar worn by people had to match their colour (or Black for IR and White for UV).
Lasers were the standard weapon in the game, and were coded according to the clearance of the firer. Reflective armor, protecting against lasers, was also coded by colour and couldn't protect against any laser of a shorter wavelength - so people had no protection of those of higher clearence than themselves.
> "There's a lot of scary things here, but to me > what is most scary is that American copyright > owners can mobilize foreign police to do their > bidding." > Perhaps dantheman82 needs to understand the > concept of international copyright law. Many > countries, including those in the story, have > agreements to enforce each other's copyrights.
I think it's more the fact that they can get the police in another country to shut down a copyright violator, whereas Joe Average can't get the police in their own country to catch the person who burgled him..
> We have the source code - and as such it gives > confidence that the firefox team have no evil > to hide.
But that's another problem. Anyone could download the source, code a backdoor into Firefox, recompile it and stick the result up somewhere. You don't know that the binary you're running is the result of compiling that source.
However, the bulk of the article is indeed complete rubbish. The vast majority of people, when presented with an unsigned code warning, indeed do just click 'install' automatically because, well, what else are they supposed to do? Code signing, just like chip and PIN credit cards, is yet another technology that's intended to shift blame rather than achieving anything.
> It seems clear to me that Cohen knew what > Apple was doing, and saw an opportunity to > profit from Apple's marketing (by deceiving > web surfers into accidentally stumbling onto > his own service), or extorting money from > Apple.
I think the real point is that if it was another tech company who had grabbed the iTunes domain, then people would still be going on about how wrong it was, but nothing would be being done about it - and/or Apple would be trying to buy the domain from the other firm rather than talk to the DNS provider.
If you read the press release, you have to buy them in units of 100,000!
That $100 isn't a unit price. It's a bulk discount price.
Phish Firefox?
on
Gone Phishing?
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· Score: 2, Interesting
I personally have a bet that, if FireFox gets popular, hackers will start using its open source nature to phish Firefox itself.
Ie, they'll hand out fake Firefox download links in e-mails or HOST file hack mozilla.org. Then, when you download, you get Firefox - plus add-on code that sniffs your keystrokes or credit card numbers.
Mind you, this has been my big problem with using Firefox from the beginning: the distribution might contain that kind of thing anyway. At least MS, with their existing millions, are unlikely to be interested in my card number.
For your application to be user friendly, it has to actually be friendly to the user.
This means that:
- There is no way to create, let's say, a user-friendly interface for product activation because activation is in itself a distrustful, user-hostile goal.
- If you want to avoid describing to the user what the computer is doing, whether that's because it's something underhand or because you are an insufficiently skilled explainer to be able to describe it in understandable terms, then no matter how many windows and buttons and fancy animations you include it will be obvious that you are treating the user as stupid, which is not friendly.
- If you cannot give the user useful information because it is not technically possible to do so, then do not think that giving them some information using a component from a user interfacing handbook will make your app friendly. As an example, just because it is not possible for a web-browser to provide a true time-based progress bar (which rises at constant rate and completes immediately when full) does not mean that's OK to slap in a progress bar that displays a relatively meaningless value. (What is the average user supposed to do with the knowledge of how many parts of the network download and typesetting task have been completed, especially when the parts are decided arbitrarily by the system designer and never explained?)
> But instead, people have the attitude that > they have the RIGHT to have something that > they have not paid for.
Let me clarify something here.
I bought HL2 via Steam. I now have a copy of activated, legal HL2 on my machine. It doesn't need a CD to run (which is good, because since I bought via Steam, I don't have one)
Now those people who went and bought the CD had to do the Steam activation *and* put the CD in the drive.
Arguing that they're "stealing" and "ripping off Valve" by CD-cracking the retail version ignores the fact that Valve are quite happy for people to play with the online activation only, since Steam purchasers are doing just that.
> I think you're missing the more important > point - the employees can choose to move to > another job. They are in no sense "stuck" or > forced to stay.
Two problems.
a) They can't move to another job if everyone in the industry is engaging in the same practice, as they could wind up doing if it's benefical to business to do so. If you mean they could move to another industry, that's by no means trivial.
b) When they get to the interview for their new job, they have to tell their prospective employer that they left their old job because the work was too hard. Think many employers or HR departments are keeping up to date on the conditions at every company that a new hire might have previously worked for? Oops, don't let the door hit you in the ass on the way out.
> Even more importantly - they agreed up front > to work for $XXK a year as exempt employees. > If they think they are being taken advantage > of, they can complain. If they don't see > action, they can quit.
The reality is that for the majority of people there is no practical ability to negotiate with their boss, so this doesn't even enter into the argument.
You're missing the point. The real reason why this kind of thing has to be done by regulation is that if it's beneficial to business (which it probably is, else EA wouldn't do it) then sooner or later every business is going to wind up either doing it themselves, or having to compete against others that are doing it.
The whole idea of business regulation is to block off this sort of thing so that the need to compete with others who are doing it, doesn't force firms to start.
> Translation: We're too lazy to work hard and > start our own businesses.
Ah, yes, the classic assumption that anyone who complains isn't working hard enough. Funny how you have no evidence whatsoever of it. Funny how some people, in particular farmers, work harder than any entrepreneur and still seem to be paid much less.
> We're too lazy to try and raise the capital > necessary.
It's not a question of laziness, it's a question of possibility. You try writing a business plan for a computer gaming company these days that would get any attention from investors. Either you do the same thing existing firms do, in which case they win because they started first, or you do something different, in which case they win because there is a good reason why they do what they do.
I haven't worked for a small firm, but I have seem plenty of small game development houses run into the ground because they can't get distribution. No-one wants to distribute your product unless you advertise and to advertise you have to outbid the existing big boys for magazine space (no, a few banner ads won't cut it) which by definition you can't do. We won't even get into the fact that you're locked out of the console market as a start-up because console firms are paranoid and are "alright jack" without you.
> People start small businesses every day. Most > of them fail. Some of them prosper. It's > always worked this way.
No, it hasn't always been the case that most of them fail.
They're mostly failing now because the conditions for startups have gotten worse. This is because, as time passes, the winners win bigger and the relatively start position of the new entrants gets further and further back.
On the current trend, the failure rate will hit 100% at some time. Do you have any evidence that the trend will alter?
> I also think that believing that government > officials are more accountable than "corrupt" > businesses is just insane.
I didn't say that. I said that the people running a socialism always wind up corrupt (as we know) and that monopoly company directors are no less corrupt that socialist governments.
> You offer absolutely no evidence that > capitalism is less sustainable than socialism. > We've got a standard of living in the USA that > tends to show that your antecdotal evidence is > just wrong.
Sure, no doubt about that. But that doesn't necessarily mean that capitalism is still working. Capitalism gets you up to a high standard of living while it is working, as indeed it has done. But when the markets become solved, the socialist elements cut in and things start to level off rather fast. You can see that happening in several areas now. Why haven't we moved beyond the computer yet?
> Sure, there is income disparity -- but that's > part of the point of capitalism.
I wasn't complaining about income disparity. The point I was trying to make was that sooner or later free enterprise must die.
It is a horrible paradox that capitalism ensures that people get what they want. Yet, if someone already has all they want, there is nothing you can sell them. So sooner or later, if the standard of living increases to raise, we will kill free enterprise because there will be no scope to raise it any higher within a viable business model.
Think about it. A core basis of capitalism is competition. But, what happens when the competition is won? Once it is won, the competition is over, and you lose all the benefits it was giving you. But if you try to rig it so that it can't be won, nobody will want to compete, because they can't win.
Look at MMO games which have exactly this problem with their PvP areas, except it happens faster. Why should capitalism's competition be any different? It's just slower and does more good for as long as it lasts.
> and weak evidence at that. There are some good > argumen
Exactly. This is the basic thing which people refuse to see, because seeing it would be too horrible for them to contemplate:
In many industries, free enterprise is now dead.
The entry costs have risen far too high and the established businesses are so well-grounded that no new entrant has any hope of competing - or at least, they might have a slender hope, but nobody's going to invest the required amount on the basis of a slender hope.
Some argue that free enterprise exists as long as they have the "right" to start a business, or are "free" to do so. But the freedom to do something that is sure to fail and have negative consequences is not freedom at all. If it was, any US citizen would be "free" to shoot people, because they CAN pull the trigger on the gun; it's just a bad idea and will have negative consequences.
Socialism may have been a horrible failure but its final criticism of capitalism stands: that the capitalist process inevitably results in something like this happening eventually, and when it does the system basically becomes a socialism anyway except the corrupt people running it are a bunch of corporation heads instead of a government with accountability. So capitalism was never a sustainable choice: it was always socialism now or socialism later.
> If the company is breaking the law, they > should be punished. If the company is simply > enforcing contracts that people agreed to when > the dollar signs overrode their common sense, > the employees should shut up or consider a > career change.
However, in contract law, when one side has much greater bargaining power than the other, some extra provisions kick in to prevent that one side from (basically) ordering the other to bend over. The tilted employers' market could be good reason for this.
Basically, it is important that no company gets away with offering contracts like this because if they do, pretty soon [i]all[/i] companies will be doing it, and there'll be no option to move elsewhere.
Slashdot Mirror
> Unless the guy playing the baddies can just
> drop random shit in on top of the player, that
> is...
Actually, the "Invader" player has Spawn cards which they can play each turn to drop new monsters on the map in any area which the marines don't have line of sight to.
"You know that corner in the room you just went through, but can't see now because you're partways down the corridor? Well, there was (play) a Mancubus hiding there all along!"
I've played the game a couple of times now, but the random ammo system does kinda stink, and it's a little bit slow for something based on a fast-pased video game. Oh, and it's very, very hard for the marine players to win. Ever.
> So basically EA, fuck you. I'll take my $100 a
> year that I would have spent on your products
> and go to one of the two or three remaining
> competitors left in console gaming. Or maybe
> I'll go buy some basement-made games like
> Uplink instead.
While you're still allowed to.
With Xbox 2 claimed to replace PCs, TCPA, the ballooning console market and the rising cost of games-capable PCs, it won't be long before it's impossible for any small studio to compete.
The cycle for new consoles is already around three years, which is too fast for many smaller firms to produce a game and have it available in time for the console to be current!
Alllrighty. Can we please stop with the "this isn't that good a deal" posts? If any of your firms you're talking about feel like coming down to the UK and laying down cable, then we can start comparing.
Broadband firms in the UK are expensive because all the ADSL local loops in the country are owned by British Telecom. Broadband companies have to pay to access these. And, wouldn't you just know it, British Telecom offer a broadband service as well, and guess how much they charge themselves for local loop (hint: not much)
Exactly.
If there was one law that would sort this out quickly, it must be that a human negotiator must be present or contactable when contracts are issued.
Having a legally binding contract presented by a machine, which can't be argued or negotiated with and which has no interest in getting you to accept, is a ridiculous and one-sided situation.
I think the argument is more that this type of thing represents a lack of consideration. (Ie, Blizzard don't have to GUARANTEE letting you onto the game - and thus could get away with not doing it at all under the EULA - but you don't get to ignore YOUR side of the bargain whenever you feel like it)
> Then Blizzard sues them for copyright
> infringement. By default, you don't actually
> have the right to run Blizzard's software.
> It's copyrighted, which means you can't copy
> it (for example, to your hard drive during
> install), without their permission. So if Joe
> never read or agreed to the EULA, then
> he "copied" the software without permission.
Only two problems:
a) only the EULA says that he licenses the software rather than buying it. Since the store sold it to him as "a game" (rather than "a license to play a game"), he could argue he thought he had purchased the game and had the right to use it.
b) if the CD has autorun that kicks off the installer, but that somehow didn't present the EULA, then Blizzard invited him to copy the software onto his hard disk rather than him doing it off his own bat.
> It certainly has nothing to do with the
> hundreds of thousands of hours of timely,
> intense, and cutting-edge creative energy put
> into these games by teams of dozens and dozens
> of talented programmers, artists, musicians,
> and sound designers.
Umm, that's *how* it floods the market with them.
Because the time-sink in Eve is even worse than the time-sink in other MMORPGs.
The time-sink in most MMO games is having to level up and fighting things on the way. The time sink in Eve is *WARPING*. Yep, you click on a star system to go to and then you have to sit and wait - often for hours on end - while watching a warp animation until you get there.
Why not go do something else? Because - here's the brilliant bit - you can be knocked out of warp at any time for a fight, and if you're not at the keyboard at that time, you're gonna die.
> Unfortunately, these people are what make
> MMORPGs fun. You get rid of the powergamer,
> and you get rid of the idea that someone can
> make a name for themself in a virtual world.
> And, IMHO, making a name for yourself in a
> virtual world is what MMORPGs are all about.
And that's why, IMHO, the MMORPG genre as it is is fundamentally broken.
As you've said, the key extra value of a MMORPG is the ability to make a make for yourself, or to stand out, or to be better than others in a virtual world. None of the other vaunted advantages of MMO games are actually unique to them. Team play? Ordinary (non-massive) multiplayer games have that; on Diablo 2, say, the process of finding a team in the chat lobby then creating a game is identical to that of finding a group then going hunting in a MMO. Persistent world? Any single player game with a save function has that.
No, what everyone wants in an MMO is to be better than the crowd. But obviously, not everyone can have that. And if those people who can't have it decide to quit, then there is no crowd left for the others to be better than.
Raph Koster gave a talk called "Small Worlds" (slides are available on the net somewhere, but I can't recall the URL I'm afraid) where he basically justified levelling treadmills in these terms. His claim was that if "betterness" was distributed in any way other than treadmills, then the 10% of players who were most attuned to that distribution method (most skilled, richest, cleverest, etc.) would consume 90% of the "betterness" and no-one else would play. Treadmills are thus the best method because a) anyone can do them, b) the people who lose out are the people who spend least time playing the game and therefore logically should care least about their character within it, and c) it ties obtaining "betterness" to activity that makes money for the MMO firm.
The example he used of a case where rare individuals got all the "betterness" was Tiger Woods. Yet it's worth noting that the existance of Tiger Woods does not prevent other people from playing and enjoying golf. But the claim that, as long as Tiger Woods exists, going to play golf at a massive tournament with a crowd (at which Tiger will be playing) offers no more, or even less, entertainment than playing with your own local club (with no crowd, but also no Tiger). Which makes a lot more sense.
AFAIK the only MMO which has absolutely zero treadmilling is Planetside, which is also IMHO *seriously* underrated.
> That the register has a lot of cash is not
> published by the defendent in the newspaper,
> it's given to the person in privacy for the
> express purpose of committing crime; in fact
> if the information were public, which
> lokitorrent certainly is, it would be useless.
Umm... you mean you [i]didn't know[/i] there was cash in the register at your local supermarket? Without needing to be told? Without even going there?
It's a joke based on an old classic RPG called Paranoia.
Security codes were assigned based on the UV spectrum, with Infrared being the lowest, and Ultraviolet the highest. The clothing and similar worn by people had to match their colour (or Black for IR and White for UV).
Lasers were the standard weapon in the game, and were coded according to the clearance of the firer. Reflective armor, protecting against lasers, was also coded by colour and couldn't protect against any laser of a shorter wavelength - so people had no protection of those of higher clearence than themselves.
> "There's a lot of scary things here, but to me
> what is most scary is that American copyright
> owners can mobilize foreign police to do their
> bidding."
> Perhaps dantheman82 needs to understand the
> concept of international copyright law. Many
> countries, including those in the story, have
> agreements to enforce each other's copyrights.
I think it's more the fact that they can get the police in another country to shut down a copyright violator, whereas Joe Average can't get the police in their own country to catch the person who burgled him..
> We have the source code - and as such it gives
> confidence that the firefox team have no evil
> to hide.
But that's another problem. Anyone could download the source, code a backdoor into Firefox, recompile it and stick the result up somewhere. You don't know that the binary you're running is the result of compiling that source.
However, the bulk of the article is indeed complete rubbish. The vast majority of people, when presented with an unsigned code warning, indeed do just click 'install' automatically because, well, what else are they supposed to do? Code signing, just like chip and PIN credit cards, is yet another technology that's intended to shift blame rather than achieving anything.
> It appears that it's properly licensed.
Who said it has to be a justified lawsuit?
> It seems clear to me that Cohen knew what
> Apple was doing, and saw an opportunity to
> profit from Apple's marketing (by deceiving
> web surfers into accidentally stumbling onto
> his own service), or extorting money from
> Apple.
I think the real point is that if it was another tech company who had grabbed the iTunes domain, then people would still be going on about how wrong it was, but nothing would be being done about it - and/or Apple would be trying to buy the domain from the other firm rather than talk to the DNS provider.
Except for one thing...
If you read the press release, you have to buy them in units of 100,000!
That $100 isn't a unit price. It's a bulk discount price.
I personally have a bet that, if FireFox gets popular, hackers will start using its open source nature to phish Firefox itself.
Ie, they'll hand out fake Firefox download links in e-mails or HOST file hack mozilla.org. Then, when you download, you get Firefox - plus add-on code that sniffs your keystrokes or credit card numbers.
Mind you, this has been my big problem with using Firefox from the beginning: the distribution might contain that kind of thing anyway. At least MS, with their existing millions, are unlikely to be interested in my card number.
For your application to be user friendly, it has to actually be friendly to the user.
This means that:
- There is no way to create, let's say, a user-friendly interface for product activation because activation is in itself a distrustful, user-hostile goal.
- If you want to avoid describing to the user what the computer is doing, whether that's because it's something underhand or because you are an insufficiently skilled explainer to be able to describe it in understandable terms, then no matter how many windows and buttons and fancy animations you include it will be obvious that you are treating the user as stupid, which is not friendly.
- If you cannot give the user useful information because it is not technically possible to do so, then do not think that giving them some information using a component from a user interfacing handbook will make your app friendly. As an example, just because it is not possible for a web-browser to provide a true time-based progress bar (which rises at constant rate and completes immediately when full) does not mean that's OK to slap in a progress bar that displays a relatively meaningless value. (What is the average user supposed to do with the knowledge of how many parts of the network download and typesetting task have been completed, especially when the parts are decided arbitrarily by the system designer and never explained?)
> But instead, people have the attitude that
> they have the RIGHT to have something that
> they have not paid for.
Let me clarify something here.
I bought HL2 via Steam. I now have a copy of activated, legal HL2 on my machine. It doesn't need a CD to run (which is good, because since I bought via Steam, I don't have one)
Now those people who went and bought the CD had to do the Steam activation *and* put the CD in the drive.
Arguing that they're "stealing" and "ripping off Valve" by CD-cracking the retail version ignores the fact that Valve are quite happy for people to play with the online activation only, since Steam purchasers are doing just that.
> I think you're missing the more important
> point - the employees can choose to move to
> another job. They are in no sense "stuck" or
> forced to stay.
Two problems.
a) They can't move to another job if everyone in the industry is engaging in the same practice, as they could wind up doing if it's benefical to business to do so. If you mean they could move to another industry, that's by no means trivial.
b) When they get to the interview for their new job, they have to tell their prospective employer that they left their old job because the work was too hard. Think many employers or HR departments are keeping up to date on the conditions at every company that a new hire might have previously worked for? Oops, don't let the door hit you in the ass on the way out.
> Even more importantly - they agreed up front
> to work for $XXK a year as exempt employees.
> If they think they are being taken advantage
> of, they can complain. If they don't see
> action, they can quit.
The reality is that for the majority of people there is no practical ability to negotiate with their boss, so this doesn't even enter into the argument.
You're missing the point. The real reason why this kind of thing has to be done by regulation is that if it's beneficial to business (which it probably is, else EA wouldn't do it) then sooner or later every business is going to wind up either doing it themselves, or having to compete against others that are doing it.
The whole idea of business regulation is to block off this sort of thing so that the need to compete with others who are doing it, doesn't force firms to start.
> Translation: We're too lazy to work hard and
> start our own businesses.
Ah, yes, the classic assumption that anyone who complains isn't working hard enough. Funny how you have no evidence whatsoever of it. Funny how some people, in particular farmers, work harder than any entrepreneur and still seem to be paid much less.
> We're too lazy to try and raise the capital
> necessary.
It's not a question of laziness, it's a question of possibility. You try writing a business plan for a computer gaming company these days that would get any attention from investors. Either you do the same thing existing firms do, in which case they win because they started first, or you do something different, in which case they win because there is a good reason why they do what they do.
I haven't worked for a small firm, but I have seem plenty of small game development houses run into the ground because they can't get distribution. No-one wants to distribute your product unless you advertise and to advertise you have to outbid the existing big boys for magazine space (no, a few banner ads won't cut it) which by definition you can't do. We won't even get into the fact that you're locked out of the console market as a start-up because console firms are paranoid and are "alright jack" without you.
> People start small businesses every day. Most
> of them fail. Some of them prosper. It's
> always worked this way.
No, it hasn't always been the case that most of them fail.
They're mostly failing now because the conditions for startups have gotten worse. This is because, as time passes, the winners win bigger and the relatively start position of the new entrants gets further and further back.
On the current trend, the failure rate will hit 100% at some time. Do you have any evidence that the trend will alter?
> I also think that believing that government
> officials are more accountable than "corrupt"
> businesses is just insane.
I didn't say that. I said that the people running a socialism always wind up corrupt (as we know) and that monopoly company directors are no less corrupt that socialist governments.
> You offer absolutely no evidence that
> capitalism is less sustainable than socialism.
> We've got a standard of living in the USA that
> tends to show that your antecdotal evidence is
> just wrong.
Sure, no doubt about that. But that doesn't necessarily mean that capitalism is still working. Capitalism gets you up to a high standard of living while it is working, as indeed it has done. But when the markets become solved, the socialist elements cut in and things start to level off rather fast. You can see that happening in several areas now. Why haven't we moved beyond the computer yet?
> Sure, there is income disparity -- but that's
> part of the point of capitalism.
I wasn't complaining about income disparity. The point I was trying to make was that sooner or later free enterprise must die.
It is a horrible paradox that capitalism ensures that people get what they want. Yet, if someone already has all they want, there is nothing you can sell them. So sooner or later, if the standard of living increases to raise, we will kill free enterprise because there will be no scope to raise it any higher within a viable business model.
Think about it. A core basis of capitalism is competition. But, what happens when the competition is won? Once it is won, the competition is over, and you lose all the benefits it was giving you. But if you try to rig it so that it can't be won, nobody will want to compete, because they can't win.
Look at MMO games which have exactly this problem with their PvP areas, except it happens faster. Why should capitalism's competition be any different? It's just slower and does more good for as long as it lasts.
> and weak evidence at that. There are some good
> argumen
Exactly. This is the basic thing which people refuse to see, because seeing it would be too horrible for them to contemplate:
In many industries, free enterprise is now dead.
The entry costs have risen far too high and the established businesses are so well-grounded that no new entrant has any hope of competing - or at least, they might have a slender hope, but nobody's going to invest the required amount on the basis of a slender hope.
Some argue that free enterprise exists as long as they have the "right" to start a business, or are "free" to do so. But the freedom to do something that is sure to fail and have negative consequences is not freedom at all. If it was, any US citizen would be "free" to shoot people, because they CAN pull the trigger on the gun; it's just a bad idea and will have negative consequences.
Socialism may have been a horrible failure but its final criticism of capitalism stands: that the capitalist process inevitably results in something like this happening eventually, and when it does the system basically becomes a socialism anyway except the corrupt people running it are a bunch of corporation heads instead of a government with accountability. So capitalism was never a sustainable choice: it was always socialism now or socialism later.
> If the company is breaking the law, they
> should be punished. If the company is simply
> enforcing contracts that people agreed to when
> the dollar signs overrode their common sense,
> the employees should shut up or consider a
> career change.
However, in contract law, when one side has much greater bargaining power than the other, some extra provisions kick in to prevent that one side from (basically) ordering the other to bend over. The tilted employers' market could be good reason for this.
Basically, it is important that no company gets away with offering contracts like this because if they do, pretty soon [i]all[/i] companies will be doing it, and there'll be no option to move elsewhere.
> Plus, they limit the power and freedom of
> those governed.
And capitalism doesn't?
Not being stopped by force from doing something doesn't make you free to do it. It also has to have at least a reasonable chance of being a good idea.