I simply cannot believe this. Admittedly, I'm not British, and I don't understand how their political system works, but it amazes me that something like this would get passed anywhere outside China.
Too me, the scariest part is, what if the FBI, after seeing this, decides Carnivore just isn't enough now, and wants power similar (or even greater) than this. Would we be able to stop them? Is it possible that even though we've been warned this could happen, that even though we've been warned that if we don't watch out, government will take more power than it should have, we are still powerless to stop Big Brother from becoming reality?
the law suffers primarily from a perception problem caused mainly by alarmist reports in the media.
Sometimes the media seems alarmist because there's something we need to be alarmed about.
I understand that Napster is a for-profit company, but right now I don't see how they are trying to profit? Where do they get their revenue? At the moment, do they make any money at all?
If at some point in the future, they start charging either a fixed price for the software, or a subscription rate, do they really think they're going to get a lot of business? At some point all these investors are going to want a return on their investment, but I don't see where they'll get the money. If Napster starts charging, people will stop using Napster and start using Gnutella/Freenet/etc
Along with ruining the fun for normal players, cheaters (especially in FPS games) usually end up ruining their own fun as well. I remember one particular server I played on in TFC, that had only one other person online when I connected, and that person appeared to be the one running the server. After playing for about 3 minutes, it became obvious to me that he was cheating (unless, of course, someone has a rational explanation for being able to switch from the sniper rifle, to the rocket launcher, to the HWGuy's gun) The thing is, even though he was obviously cheating, I was still killing him a lot more than he could kill me. Eventually, frustrated that even with his cheating he was still losing, he decided to turn the gravity from almost none to the highest setting, making it nearly impossible for me to move, so I left after that, leaving him all alone. I don't imagine he had a lot of fun all by himself there.
The point is, often cheaters (in certain types of games) will end up being punished automatically, because online games just aren't fun unless you have someone to play against, and no one likes playing against a cheater.
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Too me, the scariest part is, what if the FBI, after seeing this, decides Carnivore just isn't enough now, and wants power similar (or even greater) than this. Would we be able to stop them? Is it possible that even though we've been warned this could happen, that even though we've been warned that if we don't watch out, government will take more power than it should have, we are still powerless to stop Big Brother from becoming reality?
the law suffers primarily from a perception problem caused mainly by alarmist reports in the media.
Sometimes the media seems alarmist because there's something we need to be alarmed about.
If at some point in the future, they start charging either a fixed price for the software, or a subscription rate, do they really think they're going to get a lot of business? At some point all these investors are going to want a return on their investment, but I don't see where they'll get the money. If Napster starts charging, people will stop using Napster and start using Gnutella/Freenet/etc
The point is, often cheaters (in certain types of games) will end up being punished automatically, because online games just aren't fun unless you have someone to play against, and no one likes playing against a cheater.