DTV uses other lies to "extort" money out of their legitimate subscribers as well.
A friend of mine got laid off for a few months, and couldn't pay her DTV bill for the 4 legit boxes she had purchased and used in her home. When she got back to work and decided to have her service restored, she called DTV and the customer service rep. told her she'd have to pay $20 each for new smart cards (times 4 boxes) before they'd restore her service. She informed them all of those boxes were working *before* they cut her off, what changed? Once she got hostile with the rep. he admitted she really didn't need new cards and turned her service back on. I wondered then how many other folks paid the $20 per card just to get service back? (Note this was in addition to the "reconnect fee" she did have to pay.)
Its pretty simple, let me try to explain it again, with more clarity.
Like mud is clear?
1. Before MS's alleged illegal actions, users had to pay $40 for a Netscape web browser. They were the only major commerical web browser company.
Wrong. Netscape was always free for non-commercial use. You could choose to buy Netscape on a CD with printed documentation for $40, or register it (once again, for $$) to get said printed documentation. But the browser software was always free.
2. After MS started to bully OEMs, browsers from Netscape were free PLUS you could always use MS's browser, for free.
Wrong again. IE was orignally available only as part of the Windows 95 Plus Pack, which, IIRC, cost $49. Then M$ started giving away IE, which forced Netscape to stop charging entirely. To say that M$ always gave IE away is BS, as they originally charged for it...only no one on their right mind would buy it.
So, as you see, there are more choices today, available for less money, with more freedom than before MS's illegal actions. Therefore, proving harm to consumers is not possible. Therefore the DOJ was screwed.
Wrong 3 times. Guess you just struck out. Try not to look at what has happened since, but what the situation was for consumers at the time of the illegal action. M$ prohibited OEM distrubution of Netscape with Windows. Therefore, if the end user wanted netscape, had to download it. How many folks (in an era of 28.8 modems) would spend the hour or more needed to get Netscape - even if it was a superior product - when IE was there and merely "good enough"?
The OEMs no doubt would have loved to be able to offer a choice, but M$ prohibited it...and while that isn't denying the consumer a choice, it is denying the consumer easy availability, which in my book is harming the consumer.
And after sifting through 5,000 hours of sound, they discovered that what they heard was the kid down the street playing Sim-Ivory-Billed-Woodpecker 2002.
What you're neglecting to mention is WHY they did the item wipe. There was a day (maybe 2?) where the creature item tables were all screwed up on the test server. Low level monsters were carrying loot normally reserved for super high-end encounters. Of course, most of the "testers" on the server weren't saying anything: they were just collecting the goods.
Actually, the pwipe (and the later apologetic rollback to an iwipe) was more the result of poor scrutiny of testers, not from players going loot mad over "phat" drops. The "players have been greedy and they are corrupted" was a nice cover story for the real reasons behind the wipe.
I'll not argue that probably some 80-odd players (out of a player base of over 1500 or more) did "benefit" from the corrupted loot tables making dragon loot drop off lvl 30 mobs. (I knew of one raid leader in the Plane of Fear who left his own raid to go collect loot once the word got around it was dropping.)
However, those who were on Test to actually test Kunark were under an NDA, as well as having their characters specially flagged in the player database. Those flagged accounts would not show up in any of the standard "/who" commands, so ordinary players wouldn't know where in the game they were, or even if they actually existed on the server. (I know of this because my wife's character's name got duped in the database by accident by a tester, and she was privy for a few days to all of the chat going on in the developer's and tester's private chat channel, although she couldn't enter the new zones herself.)
Part of the NDA was where those testing were to never have their characters in any "public" (non-Kunark) zones.
What happened was when the the loot table corruption was discovered, Jeff Butler didn't call the unofficial "GM" of Test (Khelbin) to fix the problem, but instead decided to do a player rollback from a previous backup. This would wipe the "illegally" obtained loot off those who had looted it. This had the unfortunate side affect of also restoring many of the now deleted Kunark tester characters, some complete with full sets of "uber" Kunark armor and equipment. Some of those players decided that they weren't going to delete those characters, and instead decided to go into hiding until things blew over, thereby keeping characters equipped not with mere dragon loot, but with loot off the yet-unreleased expansion...things which made dragon loot pale in comparison.
Khelbin explained to many of us in chat that it would have been a simple matter to do the rollback and let him delete the accounts which were the Kunark test accounts, and Butler wouldn't allow it...hence it became the infamous pwipe. It only became an iwipe after the majority of Test's regular players "stormed the fort" in e-mails to Verant, and all the EQ websites were carrying the story. Verant did what they could to appease the Test player population, and do damage control.
Wiping the items was the only way to get back to a decent simulation of what is present on a production server. If people were truly testing, they wouldn't mind the item wipe. The ones who got pissed off and left were players, not testers.
Likewise, if it was a true "test" server, folks wouldn't mind an item wipe, but that was never the case. Many folks on Test would have loved to have been chosen to help out with testing, but were never offered the chance. The majority of those players shouldn't have to suffer an iwipe when all they had was legitimate items earned the "old fashioned way", through killing mobs, questing and the like. Test accounts were moved to Test from other servers and often "buffed" to higher levels for testing purposes. It was Verant's failure to properly isolate (and later on, account for) those Kunark test accounts which led to the iwipe, not player greed as Verant would have you believe.
Well, after 25 megs. of patches (and EQ telling me I didn't have DX8.1 installed despite it being there) I finally got it running well enough to look around at all the pretty new graphics.
This one falls squarely on Verant for blowing it big time.
Rather than let the release date slip, they shipped a very not-ready-for-primetime product (just in time for the Christmas shopping season!), hoping they could get the bugs fixed in patches before the release date when everyone would find them. They missed.
They also should have never allowed Jeff Butler & friends to do the player wipe on Test Server last year. This cost them a bunch of loyal players who either quit EQ or moved to other servers, myself included. All those players they lost from Test probably could have been very helpful in finding all the bugs they are facing now. You can't do quality testing on a project this ambitious with a small testing group.
The new graphics engine is (currently) way too hardware picky, and that should have been caught months ago. (I downloaded 3 different version of eqgfx_dx8.dll last night off the patch server in under 1 hour. Think someone isn't in Verant's offices furiously trying to get it working?)
At local "auction houses", it is, by state law, illegal for them to sell firearms. Those auctioneers have circumvented this by figuring out it's *not* illegal to give a firearm away. Therefore, they hold auctions for nice wooden gun racks, and the high bidder gets the rack, along with a "bonus" of a free rifle.
Likewise, you could place on ebay an ad saying that you are selling a "box, printed with the Microsoft logo, saying Office 2000 on it" along with various and sundry pieces of paper printed on the behalf of Microsoft, etc. The winner of this auction will also receive free, a CD-ROM, also printed on behalf of Microsoft, and bearing a Microsoft copyright, logo, etc. and the words "Office 2000" on it.
This would seem to me to be perfectly legitimate, as I do *own* the media, documentation, box, etc. and I can do with it as I see fit. Nowhere in the above ad have I tried to transfer any license. The person who buys it can do with what they receive from me anything they see fit to do, as long as they don't install it on a computer. I have done nothing wrong in placing my ad, and the onus is on the *buyer* to not break the licensing agreement.
Let's see Microsoft try to trace every sale of media on ebay to the buyer and then try to prove they actually did install it. Restraint of trade would be easy to prove if no one's ad implied that the "media" being auctioned was useable on a computer. (Then again, most Microsoft products aren't useable even right out of the shrinkwrap, but that's another subject...)
IMNSHO, the DOJ, while making a relatively strong case against M$, did so for the wrong reasons.
The *real* reason behind M$ trashing Netscape in the marketplace was Gates' desire to garner *portal* share. Netscape never intended it's browser(s) to be a profitable item, nor did M$. Both Netscape and M$, it seems to me, intended to make their respective profit off of ad impressions and click throughs on their respective portals. (Of course, each browser defaults their own portal sites unless changed by the user.)
However,M$ knew that by keeping Netscape off the desktop in preloaded systems, many of the "new to computer" Lemmings who buy preconfigured systems will never change those defaults, and certainly will not attempt to download 20 some odd megs of another browser with their 28.8 (at the time) modems.
If a portal serves up news, stock quotes, sports, entertainment and shopping, does the end user really *have* a desire to move to somewhere else?
Jon Katz makes comparisons to Disney and others. I liken the comparison to buying your first car (a "Disney" car) after just barely knowing how to drive, and this car will take you to work, school, etc. just fine. At the same time it also tells Disney just how you have been using your car each day, and when you finally decide to take a well earned vacation, it'll only provide driving directions to Disney World.
Last, but not least, I certainly cannot blame Judge Jackson for making the comments he did regarding Gates and Co. However, he really shouldn't have made them to the press outside the courtroom, he should have made those comments in court while throwing the book at them for blatant contempt of court. (Falsified videos, Gates' evasive testimony, etc.)
Slashdot Mirror
DTV uses other lies to "extort" money out of their legitimate subscribers as well.
A friend of mine got laid off for a few months, and couldn't pay her DTV bill for the 4 legit boxes she had purchased and used in her home. When she got back to work and decided to have her service restored, she called DTV and the customer service rep. told her she'd have to pay $20 each for new smart cards (times 4 boxes) before they'd restore her service. She informed them all of those boxes were working *before* they cut her off, what changed? Once she got hostile with the rep. he admitted she really didn't need new cards and turned her service back on. I wondered then how many other folks paid the $20 per card just to get service back? (Note this was in addition to the "reconnect fee" she did have to pay.)
Sim Pr0n?
Sniffer is such a generic term...perhaps a generic reply telling said attorney to "sniff my ass" is in order?
Like mud is clear?
1. Before MS's alleged illegal actions, users had to pay $40 for a Netscape web browser. They were the only major commerical web browser company.
Wrong. Netscape was always free for non-commercial use. You could choose to buy Netscape on a CD with printed documentation for $40, or register it (once again, for $$) to get said printed documentation. But the browser software was always free.
2. After MS started to bully OEMs, browsers from Netscape were free PLUS you could always use MS's browser, for free.
Wrong again. IE was orignally available only as part of the Windows 95 Plus Pack, which, IIRC, cost $49. Then M$ started giving away IE, which forced Netscape to stop charging entirely. To say that M$ always gave IE away is BS, as they originally charged for it...only no one on their right mind would buy it.
So, as you see, there are more choices today, available for less money, with more freedom than before MS's illegal actions. Therefore, proving harm to consumers is not possible. Therefore the DOJ was screwed.
Wrong 3 times. Guess you just struck out. Try not to look at what has happened since, but what the situation was for consumers at the time of the illegal action. M$ prohibited OEM distrubution of Netscape with Windows. Therefore, if the end user wanted netscape, had to download it. How many folks (in an era of 28.8 modems) would spend the hour or more needed to get Netscape - even if it was a superior product - when IE was there and merely "good enough"?
The OEMs no doubt would have loved to be able to offer a choice, but M$ prohibited it...and while that isn't denying the consumer a choice, it is denying the consumer easy availability, which in my book is harming the consumer.
Doc
Actually, the pwipe (and the later apologetic rollback to an iwipe) was more the result of poor scrutiny of testers, not from players going loot mad over "phat" drops. The "players have been greedy and they are corrupted" was a nice cover story for the real reasons behind the wipe.
I'll not argue that probably some 80-odd players (out of a player base of over 1500 or more) did "benefit" from the corrupted loot tables making dragon loot drop off lvl 30 mobs. (I knew of one raid leader in the Plane of Fear who left his own raid to go collect loot once the word got around it was dropping.)
However, those who were on Test to actually test Kunark were under an NDA, as well as having their characters specially flagged in the player database. Those flagged accounts would not show up in any of the standard "/who" commands, so ordinary players wouldn't know where in the game they were, or even if they actually existed on the server. (I know of this because my wife's character's name got duped in the database by accident by a tester, and she was privy for a few days to all of the chat going on in the developer's and tester's private chat channel, although she couldn't enter the new zones herself.)
Part of the NDA was where those testing were to never have their characters in any "public" (non-Kunark) zones.
What happened was when the the loot table corruption was discovered, Jeff Butler didn't call the unofficial "GM" of Test (Khelbin) to fix the problem, but instead decided to do a player rollback from a previous backup. This would wipe the "illegally" obtained loot off those who had looted it. This had the unfortunate side affect of also restoring many of the now deleted Kunark tester characters, some complete with full sets of "uber" Kunark armor and equipment. Some of those players decided that they weren't going to delete those characters, and instead decided to go into hiding until things blew over, thereby keeping characters equipped not with mere dragon loot, but with loot off the yet-unreleased expansion...things which made dragon loot pale in comparison.
Khelbin explained to many of us in chat that it would have been a simple matter to do the rollback and let him delete the accounts which were the Kunark test accounts, and Butler wouldn't allow it...hence it became the infamous pwipe. It only became an iwipe after the majority of Test's regular players "stormed the fort" in e-mails to Verant, and all the EQ websites were carrying the story. Verant did what they could to appease the Test player population, and do damage control.
Wiping the items was the only way to get back to a decent simulation of what is present on a production server. If people were truly testing, they wouldn't mind the item wipe. The ones who got pissed off and left were players, not testers.
Likewise, if it was a true "test" server, folks wouldn't mind an item wipe, but that was never the case. Many folks on Test would have loved to have been chosen to help out with testing, but were never offered the chance. The majority of those players shouldn't have to suffer an iwipe when all they had was legitimate items earned the "old fashioned way", through killing mobs, questing and the like. Test accounts were moved to Test from other servers and often "buffed" to higher levels for testing purposes. It was Verant's failure to properly isolate (and later on, account for) those Kunark test accounts which led to the iwipe, not player greed as Verant would have you believe.
This one falls squarely on Verant for blowing it big time.
Rather than let the release date slip, they shipped a very not-ready-for-primetime product (just in time for the Christmas shopping season!), hoping they could get the bugs fixed in patches before the release date when everyone would find them. They missed.
They also should have never allowed Jeff Butler & friends to do the player wipe on Test Server last year. This cost them a bunch of loyal players who either quit EQ or moved to other servers, myself included. All those players they lost from Test probably could have been very helpful in finding all the bugs they are facing now. You can't do quality testing on a project this ambitious with a small testing group.
The new graphics engine is (currently) way too hardware picky, and that should have been caught months ago. (I downloaded 3 different version of eqgfx_dx8.dll last night off the patch server in under 1 hour. Think someone isn't in Verant's offices furiously trying to get it working?)
Likewise, you could place on ebay an ad saying that you are selling a "box, printed with the Microsoft logo, saying Office 2000 on it" along with various and sundry pieces of paper printed on the behalf of Microsoft, etc. The winner of this auction will also receive free, a CD-ROM, also printed on behalf of Microsoft, and bearing a Microsoft copyright, logo, etc. and the words "Office 2000" on it.
This would seem to me to be perfectly legitimate, as I do *own* the media, documentation, box, etc. and I can do with it as I see fit. Nowhere in the above ad have I tried to transfer any license. The person who buys it can do with what they receive from me anything they see fit to do, as long as they don't install it on a computer. I have done nothing wrong in placing my ad, and the onus is on the *buyer* to not break the licensing agreement.
Let's see Microsoft try to trace every sale of media on ebay to the buyer and then try to prove they actually did install it. Restraint of trade would be easy to prove if no one's ad implied that the "media" being auctioned was useable on a computer. (Then again, most Microsoft products aren't useable even right out of the shrinkwrap, but that's another subject...)
Doc
The *real* reason behind M$ trashing Netscape in the marketplace was Gates' desire to garner *portal* share. Netscape never intended it's browser(s) to be a profitable item, nor did M$. Both Netscape and M$, it seems to me, intended to make their respective profit off of ad impressions and click throughs on their respective portals. (Of course, each browser defaults their own portal sites unless changed by the user.)
However,M$ knew that by keeping Netscape off the desktop in preloaded systems, many of the "new to computer" Lemmings who buy preconfigured systems will never change those defaults, and certainly will not attempt to download 20 some odd megs of another browser with their 28.8 (at the time) modems.
If a portal serves up news, stock quotes, sports, entertainment and shopping, does the end user really *have* a desire to move to somewhere else?
Jon Katz makes comparisons to Disney and others. I liken the comparison to buying your first car (a "Disney" car) after just barely knowing how to drive, and this car will take you to work, school, etc. just fine. At the same time it also tells Disney just how you have been using your car each day, and when you finally decide to take a well earned vacation, it'll only provide driving directions to Disney World.
Last, but not least, I certainly cannot blame Judge Jackson for making the comments he did regarding Gates and Co. However, he really shouldn't have made them to the press outside the courtroom, he should have made those comments in court while throwing the book at them for blatant contempt of court. (Falsified videos, Gates' evasive testimony, etc.)
Just my 2 cents.
Doc