Go after him for violating terms of agreement or something simpler.
Which it seems they're doing.
You don't know all the facts. Maybe this IS unethical - he may be going in and posting false/defamatory information about pest control companies, which is causing them to lose business.
My views aren't 'limited', as you're trying to posit. You can't 'outlaw' the GPL because it's not causing harm to anyone. It is simply a set of conditions under which I may or may not choose to share my software.
'Folks like me'? What kind of attack is this? You know very little about me (I'd say you know nothing about me, but that can't be 100% accurate, as I've posted a username, and there are links to my website, etc).
Great way to disagree with someone - slander them as an AC.
I am not homosexual, but have no problem with consenting adults engaging in whatever acts they choose.
How does this AT ALL relate to some trolling abusing terms of conditions, wasting bandwidth and repeatedly posting clearly unwelcome messages to a private forum? PCT has clearly NOT consented to this person posting - they've asked to him to stop, and have presumably filed papers against him to this effect as well. How this related to homosexuality still is beyond me. Care to explain?
NO - '1-5' moderation IS NOT THAT GOOD. It serves a purpose in some settings, but it also imposes extra burdens on people to learn a system, 'browser' at different levels, engage in specific moderation themselves on occasion, etc. That's just unrealistic in small settings. A forum with only 20-30 posters per day/week just can't operate that way. A forum with 20-30 posters PER MINUTE *needs* to operate in some similar way to this, just to cope with various trolls.
Use the restaurant analogy again. If someone is coming in to my restaurant being 'rude' or 'annoying', I STILL have the right to ask him to leave. If he doesn't, or continues to get past security measures I put in place, I'm perfectly justified in getting law enforcement to come in and help *enforce* laws which are there to protect my business and property from vagrants and miscreants - this is what PCT is doing.
Getting back to a previous post of mine - just because there are some technical measures doesn't mean I can't employ legal measures as well. Simply because I don't have the latest lock technology on a door to my house doesn't mean people can some in and take things without violating the law.
There are numerous other comments stating that they shouldn't sue, and/or they are too technically imcompetent to deal with a troll. I was reiterating the point that those methods aren't foolproof. You know that it's impossible, and so do I and many others, but certainly others still think it's a technical issue, not a behavioural one.
They've simply refused to put themselves in a constantly reactive state. They are taking some action to establish a precedent that you must abide by their TOS, or face REAL consequences, not simply 'you can't post for 2 hours' or some other slap on the wrist.
PCT seems to be an association or industry portal of some sort - they're servicing a number of pest control companies. Their forum users aren't there to get into popularity contests with 'friends/foes' and moderation totals and all that crap - they're there to exchange business information. Other 'social engineering' answers simply burden the rest of the users who are abiding by the rules.
Block by IP and you potentially block other members. Require moderator approvals and you lose the 'real time' aspect of the forum.
IT people want to look for technical solutions to this because it keeps them in a position of power. If this lawsuit is successful, you won't have to rely on your IT people as much to keep a lid on technical problems. There will hopefully be one more precedent which establishes that 'stop' means 'stop', and there will be a financial penalty for failing to comply.
We don't know all of what's gone on. They may very well have been tried. I'd imagine they'd contacted his ISP to at least get his contact info to serve papers. The site seems to be an industry association of some type - perhaps the membership didn't want to go through all the extra hoops themselves just to stop one person, and felt that a lawsuit was a more prudent use of funds.
So, everyone's use of something should be forever negatively impacted because no one has the guts to directly confront one person and to make him play by the rules? Good response.
So you think the guy wouldn't sue his ISP for revoking his account because of someone's complaint?
If the ISP wouldn't do it for fear of a lawsuit, then blocking based on IP just hurts more people than this one guy. If the ISP *would* take on the lawsuit, that means there's merit, and there are legal grounds to go after this guy. If there are legal grounds, let the pest company go after him directly.
I've run message boards in the past - there are always a few bad apples, and I inevitably got/get others saying
"I'm on board X (running software Y) and they just ban someone - you're stupid cause you can't ban someone."
I try to stress to people you CAN NOT ban someone technically in forums on the internet. Well, not easily. Certainly without putting up roadblocks which just annoy the rest of the people.
What can you do?
1. Require username/password - unless these are paid for, it's hard to stop people from registering
2. Require a reply to email (or click on a link) to verify an email address. Big deal - so I know you know how to open a hotmail account.
3. Track IPs and ban on that - great, except for people on dialups, or shared systems, or mobile people.
4. Require moderators to review and approve all posts before they go out. Most reliable, but requires increasing staff time/cost as traffic grows.
There is NO foolproof way to stop this sort of stuff. I hope this suit sends a message to those trolls who waste/abuse resources and do not heed polite requests to play by the rules the rest of us follow.
I'm normally not in favor of legal tactics, and generally favor technical answers to technical problems, but this isn't a technical problem. It's a behavioural one, and we have a legal system in place to deal with bad/wrong/illegal behaviour.
Tuesday, November 27, 2001 8:07 AM EST ------ It was published over a year ago, and undoubtedly was based on their spring/summer 2001 trials. Even then this info wasn't revolutionary, and is even less so now.
How are they making money from them? I certainly can't play them, and I can't see how much value there is in games you can't play. If they're simply keeping them around as fodder for copyright violation lawsuits, perhaps you've got a point.
Because they'd more than likely determine that it's not worth the cost to them to sell a smaller number of titles. The fixed costs (duplication, bookkeeping, marketing and others) are essentially the same whether there's 20 file or 500 files on a disk, but it's less enticing to buy a disk with 20 games than it is 500 (usually, anyway).
What'd be SMART - if they were to do it - is for a company to bundle all its old games together and ship it with MAME. I thought Activisin did something like this, but EA hasn't done it. Yes, it's not MAME, but there are C64 emulators available. If they'd ship all their old classics (Skyfox, Archon, Seven Cities, etc) *with* an emulator, it'd certainly sell. Huge amounts? Maybe not, but the development cost is practically nill.
What'd be cool is if there was an agreement between the major ROM copyright holders to allow some company to put all the old ROMs on one CD and sell, then split an amount between them. I'm thinking small amounts per CD (1-2 cents per game?) - a disc with 500 games may have to split $10 between the original copyright holders. Perhaps the administrative costs might be too high for some, but they'd be getting *something* instead of people continually 'stealing' their original work. Yes, I've got ROMs for VCS cartridges I bought, and C64 games, and even a few I never bought. If I want more, the only options I have are 'illegal' ones.
Someone give me an affordable, *legal* way to play those good old games I miss from the past, please.
I kinda agree - I think the reasoning is that people may have used money in 1996 to buy something else, but got MS stuff even if they didn't want it. Problem is, many companies they would have bought from in 96 ain't around any more, and MS is sometimes all that's left.:)
Oh, and how is the service in thunderstorms or other rainy conditions?
Better than our local cable company was during calm sunny days.
My wife works from home and ends up watching a lot of TV. First year we lived here, cable was *constantly* going out - often for minutes or hours at a stretch, with no adverse weather in sight. In a one month period we had about 20 hours of down time *that we knew about* (might have been off at 3am - who knows?). On average, we had about 2-3 hours of noticeable downtime per month with cable. I think we've had about 5 hours total in the past 3 years of DirecTV. Oh, and the cable company 'upgraded' since then and telemarkets us to come back, even though they still apparently don't have some basic channels we really want.
So, no, directv isn't perfect in bad weather, but it's still miles better than our cable ever was.
...you're not going to go for a different OS just because you "like it better"
Hrm... most people we deal with do that. Functionality, end results, lower cost don't often stand a chance against someone who's already made up their mind that something else is 'better'. Why? "It feels better"/"I like it more"/"It's prettier" all pretty much sum up the reasons why most people make their choices. They'll then look for a study or whitepaper to validate their decision.
And where do you see evidence they need new hardware?
They can't run Java on existing machines due to OS. Assumption on my part - I'd thought I'd read that they'd need to upgrade hardware to move to Java. I assume they *could* just change OS to run Java instead (Linux on same hardware? Or Solaris?).
The long and short is that at this time they have no cost-effective way to move to anything else except that which can run on their existing FreeBSD systems - PHP fit the bill better than Java or pretty much anything else given their constraints.
Is it the *best* way to go? Long term you may think not, but I tend to think it'll be fine for them. They've always seemed to be much more technology agnostic, and certainly got pretty far without any big name app servers behind them over the past 6-7 years.
Now to me that is putting the cart before the horse. First you choose what software you want to run, then you choose the platform you run it on.
They've already got a cart AND horse and it's been moving along for years.
Yeah, Java could handle what they need as well, theoretically. In the real world, they already have *thousands* of machines running FreeBSD. Scrapping all of those to move to new hardware and OS just to THEN be able to port everything to Java is extremely costly, both hardware-wise and time-wise. The cost differential must not have been enough to counteract whatever supposed deficincies some people think PHP may have.
If they're really serious about Java, then can migrate things to PHP, then move those processes over to other platforms (on which Java will perform better) then migrate things to Java. Even if that go that route for some sections, it'll be years before it's complete.
So, Java is great in theory but when push comes to shove, PHP is the one which is getting the job done.
Why would you take personal umbrage because some people make the perfectly valid observation that the GPL is viral? Cancerous is a somewhat loaded term, but it most certainly is viral. I don't remember anyone referring to the GPL as communist, but I can recall some MS officials stating that it was not in the US taxpayers' interest to have US government funded research be licensed under the GPL (which can be construed as 'GPL is unamerican' certainly).
But when has Microsoft the company ever called YOU - Malcontent - "communist or cancerous". I dare say never. They may, as a corporate entity, publicly disagree with a license (let's remember, it's GPL licensing they have big problems with, not you personally) which you think is the bee's knees, but they don't personally attack YOU.
You're suggesting there's no moral corruption at the top of Sears or IBM or WalMart or any of the other dozens of companies much larger than Microsoft? MS is the pinnacle of evil incarnate?
You're just not as involved in the other industries to see how large companies stomp over small ones all the time, regardless of industry. WalMart certainly has plenty of complaints against it, but they're selling Linux online, so maybe we should be nice to them?
Partially - it depends on the product. Certaily the OEM version will have more restrictions because the OEM got a lower price. My storebought Win2k doesn't have the restrictions you're talking about - I can wipe it from a machine, sell the machine, and reinstall the Win2k disc on a new machine. I paid $190 for that version tho, which is probably much more than Compaq paid for a 98 OEM version. Lower price = more restrictions.
Slashdot Mirror
Would that be the IO library that was so good it was scrapped and rewritten last year?
Go after him for violating terms of agreement or something simpler.
Which it seems they're doing.
You don't know all the facts. Maybe this IS unethical - he may be going in and posting false/defamatory information about pest control companies, which is causing them to lose business.
My views aren't 'limited', as you're trying to posit. You can't 'outlaw' the GPL because it's not causing harm to anyone. It is simply a set of conditions under which I may or may not choose to share my software.
'Folks like me'? What kind of attack is this? You know very little about me (I'd say you know nothing about me, but that can't be 100% accurate, as I've posted a username, and there are links to my website, etc).
Great way to disagree with someone - slander them as an AC.
I am not homosexual, but have no problem with consenting adults engaging in whatever acts they choose.
How does this AT ALL relate to some trolling abusing terms of conditions, wasting bandwidth and repeatedly posting clearly unwelcome messages to a private forum? PCT has clearly NOT consented to this person posting - they've asked to him to stop, and have presumably filed papers against him to this effect as well. How this related to homosexuality still is beyond me. Care to explain?
NO - '1-5' moderation IS NOT THAT GOOD. It serves a purpose in some settings, but it also imposes extra burdens on people to learn a system, 'browser' at different levels, engage in specific moderation themselves on occasion, etc. That's just unrealistic in small settings. A forum with only 20-30 posters per day/week just can't operate that way. A forum with 20-30 posters PER MINUTE *needs* to operate in some similar way to this, just to cope with various trolls.
Use the restaurant analogy again. If someone is coming in to my restaurant being 'rude' or 'annoying', I STILL have the right to ask him to leave. If he doesn't, or continues to get past security measures I put in place, I'm perfectly justified in getting law enforcement to come in and help *enforce* laws which are there to protect my business and property from vagrants and miscreants - this is what PCT is doing.
Getting back to a previous post of mine - just because there are some technical measures doesn't mean I can't employ legal measures as well. Simply because I don't have the latest lock technology on a door to my house doesn't mean people can some in and take things without violating the law.
"the rules" of their website - not 'the rules' of the internet. No one said about 'rules of the internet'.
Quit being so damned whiney about this. It's pct's forum, they can do what they want.
There are numerous other comments stating that they shouldn't sue, and/or they are too technically imcompetent to deal with a troll. I was reiterating the point that those methods aren't foolproof. You know that it's impossible, and so do I and many others, but certainly others still think it's a technical issue, not a behavioural one.
They've simply refused to put themselves in a constantly reactive state. They are taking some action to establish a precedent that you must abide by their TOS, or face REAL consequences, not simply 'you can't post for 2 hours' or some other slap on the wrist.
PCT seems to be an association or industry portal of some sort - they're servicing a number of pest control companies. Their forum users aren't there to get into popularity contests with 'friends/foes' and moderation totals and all that crap - they're there to exchange business information. Other 'social engineering' answers simply burden the rest of the users who are abiding by the rules.
Block by IP and you potentially block other members. Require moderator approvals and you lose the 'real time' aspect of the forum.
IT people want to look for technical solutions to this because it keeps them in a position of power. If this lawsuit is successful, you won't have to rely on your IT people as much to keep a lid on technical problems. There will hopefully be one more precedent which establishes that 'stop' means 'stop', and there will be a financial penalty for failing to comply.
We don't know all of what's gone on. They may very well have been tried. I'd imagine they'd contacted his ISP to at least get his contact info to serve papers. The site seems to be an industry association of some type - perhaps the membership didn't want to go through all the extra hoops themselves just to stop one person, and felt that a lawsuit was a more prudent use of funds.
So, everyone's use of something should be forever negatively impacted because no one has the guts to directly confront one person and to make him play by the rules? Good response.
So you think the guy wouldn't sue his ISP for revoking his account because of someone's complaint?
If the ISP wouldn't do it for fear of a lawsuit, then blocking based on IP just hurts more people than this one guy. If the ISP *would* take on the lawsuit, that means there's merit, and there are legal grounds to go after this guy. If there are legal grounds, let the pest company go after him directly.
I've run message boards in the past - there are always a few bad apples, and I inevitably got/get others saying
"I'm on board X (running software Y) and they just ban someone - you're stupid cause you can't ban someone."
I try to stress to people you CAN NOT ban someone technically in forums on the internet. Well, not easily. Certainly without putting up roadblocks which just annoy the rest of the people.
What can you do?
1. Require username/password - unless these are paid for, it's hard to stop people from registering
2. Require a reply to email (or click on a link) to verify an email address. Big deal - so I know you know how to open a hotmail account.
3. Track IPs and ban on that - great, except for people on dialups, or shared systems, or mobile people.
4. Require moderators to review and approve all posts before they go out. Most reliable, but requires increasing staff time/cost as traffic grows.
There is NO foolproof way to stop this sort of stuff. I hope this suit sends a message to those trolls who waste/abuse resources and do not heed polite requests to play by the rules the rest of us follow.
I'm normally not in favor of legal tactics, and generally favor technical answers to technical problems, but this isn't a technical problem. It's a behavioural one, and we have a legal system in place to deal with bad/wrong/illegal behaviour.
Tuesday, November 27, 2001 8:07 AM EST
------
It was published over a year ago, and undoubtedly was based on their spring/summer 2001 trials. Even then this info wasn't revolutionary, and is even less so now.
How are they making money from them? I certainly can't play them, and I can't see how much value there is in games you can't play. If they're simply keeping them around as fodder for copyright violation lawsuits, perhaps you've got a point.
Because they'd more than likely determine that it's not worth the cost to them to sell a smaller number of titles. The fixed costs (duplication, bookkeeping, marketing and others) are essentially the same whether there's 20 file or 500 files on a disk, but it's less enticing to buy a disk with 20 games than it is 500 (usually, anyway).
Replying to own post:
What'd be SMART - if they were to do it - is for a company to bundle all its old games together and ship it with MAME. I thought Activisin did something like this, but EA hasn't done it. Yes, it's not MAME, but there are C64 emulators available. If they'd ship all their old classics (Skyfox, Archon, Seven Cities, etc) *with* an emulator, it'd certainly sell. Huge amounts? Maybe not, but the development cost is practically nill.
What'd be cool is if there was an agreement between the major ROM copyright holders to allow some company to put all the old ROMs on one CD and sell, then split an amount between them. I'm thinking small amounts per CD (1-2 cents per game?) - a disc with 500 games may have to split $10 between the original copyright holders. Perhaps the administrative costs might be too high for some, but they'd be getting *something* instead of people continually 'stealing' their original work. Yes, I've got ROMs for VCS cartridges I bought, and C64 games, and even a few I never bought. If I want more, the only options I have are 'illegal' ones.
Someone give me an affordable, *legal* way to play those good old games I miss from the past, please.
I kinda agree - I think the reasoning is that people may have used money in 1996 to buy something else, but got MS stuff even if they didn't want it. Problem is, many companies they would have bought from in 96 ain't around any more, and MS is sometimes all that's left. :)
Oh, and how is the service in thunderstorms or other rainy conditions?
Better than our local cable company was during calm sunny days.
My wife works from home and ends up watching a lot of TV. First year we lived here, cable was *constantly* going out - often for minutes or hours at a stretch, with no adverse weather in sight. In a one month period we had about 20 hours of down time *that we knew about* (might have been off at 3am - who knows?). On average, we had about 2-3 hours of noticeable downtime per month with cable. I think we've had about 5 hours total in the past 3 years of DirecTV. Oh, and the cable company 'upgraded' since then and telemarkets us to come back, even though they still apparently don't have some basic channels we really want.
So, no, directv isn't perfect in bad weather, but it's still miles better than our cable ever was.
Even most of them aren't getting that kind of rate anymore. That may be a published price, but it's not usually what ends up being agreed to.
...you're not going to go for a different OS just because you "like it better"
Hrm... most people we deal with do that. Functionality, end results, lower cost don't often stand a chance against someone who's already made up their mind that something else is 'better'. Why? "It feels better"/"I like it more"/"It's prettier" all pretty much sum up the reasons why most people make their choices. They'll then look for a study or whitepaper to validate their decision.
Yes, they have a right to say things, but they don't have a right to force me to hear them.
Don't answer the phone then - it's a bloody phone call, not anything 'forced'.
Untrue - uploaded files are given random names- two samename files won't collide.
And where do you see evidence they need new hardware?
They can't run Java on existing machines due to OS. Assumption on my part - I'd thought I'd read that they'd need to upgrade hardware to move to Java. I assume they *could* just change OS to run Java instead (Linux on same hardware? Or Solaris?).
The long and short is that at this time they have no cost-effective way to move to anything else except that which can run on their existing FreeBSD systems - PHP fit the bill better than Java or pretty much anything else given their constraints.
Is it the *best* way to go? Long term you may think not, but I tend to think it'll be fine for them. They've always seemed to be much more technology agnostic, and certainly got pretty far without any big name app servers behind them over the past 6-7 years.
Now to me that is putting the cart before the horse. First you choose what software you want to run, then you choose the platform you run it on.
They've already got a cart AND horse and it's been moving along for years.
Yeah, Java could handle what they need as well, theoretically. In the real world, they already have *thousands* of machines running FreeBSD. Scrapping all of those to move to new hardware and OS just to THEN be able to port everything to Java is extremely costly, both hardware-wise and time-wise. The cost differential must not have been enough to counteract whatever supposed deficincies some people think PHP may have.
If they're really serious about Java, then can migrate things to PHP, then move those processes over to other platforms (on which Java will perform better) then migrate things to Java. Even if that go that route for some sections, it'll be years before it's complete.
So, Java is great in theory but when push comes to shove, PHP is the one which is getting the job done.
What does HTTP file uploading have to do with a user security model, or distinct user sets on each server?
Why would you take personal umbrage because some people make the perfectly valid observation that the GPL is viral? Cancerous is a somewhat loaded term, but it most certainly is viral. I don't remember anyone referring to the GPL as communist, but I can recall some MS officials stating that it was not in the US taxpayers' interest to have US government funded research be licensed under the GPL (which can be construed as 'GPL is unamerican' certainly).
But when has Microsoft the company ever called YOU - Malcontent - "communist or cancerous". I dare say never. They may, as a corporate entity, publicly disagree with a license (let's remember, it's GPL licensing they have big problems with, not you personally) which you think is the bee's knees, but they don't personally attack YOU.
You're suggesting there's no moral corruption at the top of Sears or IBM or WalMart or any of the other dozens of companies much larger than Microsoft? MS is the pinnacle of evil incarnate?
You're just not as involved in the other industries to see how large companies stomp over small ones all the time, regardless of industry. WalMart certainly has plenty of complaints against it, but they're selling Linux online, so maybe we should be nice to them?
Partially - it depends on the product. Certaily the OEM version will have more restrictions because the OEM got a lower price. My storebought Win2k doesn't have the restrictions you're talking about - I can wipe it from a machine, sell the machine, and reinstall the Win2k disc on a new machine. I paid $190 for that version tho, which is probably much more than Compaq paid for a 98 OEM version. Lower price = more restrictions.