There is at least one precedent for making owning machines illegal. Slot machines are regulated and it is illegal to own one in most states, even if the coin mechanism is disabled to play for free. Of course, that is what makes them l33t to own for rich folks. Kinda like Coors beer in "Smokey and the Bandit", you want it because it is illegal.
I am not sure if they store this info, but Dominos.com lets you pay by credit card on their online form, so that information very likely could be stored. And their pizza is much better to boot. I always get a lower price (the person on the phone is always rushed, hard to compare specials) AND I get points toward free food. Then again, I always use the (*)Cash option I prefer to tip in cash and the price is usually in the $15-$25 range is all. But ordering pizza by phone sucks, costs more and offers you no control over the process. Meanwhile, online ordering is a perfect example of the usefulness of the net.
Now that I think of it, if the internet was only capable of porn and ordering pizza, it would still be worth the $40 a month connect fee.
i'm having a hard time picturing a credible scenario where a woman would be prepared to have sex in exchange for a copy of a video game.
Sure, she limps when she walks, and she is gap toothed enough to eat corn on the cob through a picket fence, but in the dark, all women look like sisters. Then again, if you are trying to trade a game for sex, you probably don't look much better either, so maybe it will be a match made in heaven.
That said, this is one of the reasons I have been pro-steam for years. They make mistakes, but they have a history of dealing with it directly and honestly. If Sony ever buys them out, I will have to start pirating games, which is something I haven't done in many years.
Not to mention the fact that if they truly are such a troll, they don't really care about their name, just the content of their trolls. They can already just setup a new account and start over with zero karma.
If you COPY a DVD for ANY purpose (other than the temporary copy in memory sort of a thing) and by any methods you have committed copyright infringement.
I understand that the case has nothing to do with fair use. If you read my comment, I made that quite clear that they did infringe, but the DMCA didn't apply, in the first couple sentences. I have no idea how you got the idea that I was stating otherwise. The comments on fair use were concerning the results of the finding, NOT the content of the case.
In how this applies to regular people, my statement still applies. Many would argue that "Fair Use" applies to DVDs here in America, just as it does for CDs, tapes and documents, so copying a DVD isn't infringement if you own the DVD and are only making an archival copy, which the law does allow. There really isn't any question about that. The only question WAS that in order to make the copy, it was thought you had to violate the DMCA, all in the quest to make the copy that all parties agree is legally "Fair Use". This case would indicate that it ISN'T a DMCA violation.
Unless you find a way to break a couple of thermodynamic laws, there's no real way to completely hide an object's thermal emissions if it is warmer than its surroundings.
Not exactly true. Military jet nozzles are designed to create a smaller IR footprint, and there are several ways to reduce your thermal print. Obviously creating less heat, storing heat to prevent it from being emitted, pushing it in a direction 180 degrees away from the radar source, etc. It starts with having more imagination. The goal is NOT to make IR emissions "disappear", only to create the illusion that they have by controlling where they go. To buy time.
Sometimes, you can fool a system into thinking you are much smaller than you are, or depending on the threshold of the system, drastically increase the amount of time before you are noticed at all. Even stealth aircraft are not invisible to radar, but by the time the radar sees them, the radar site has been taken down by air to surface munitions. Same idea, only giving you a larger window before you are noticed, thus defeating better radar systems. We can already absorb and deflect microwaves fairly well, adding IR to aircraft defense would be a very big deal, for protection from radars, and from air to air and surface to air munitions. ie: Air superiority.
Once you can cloak infrared, then you have a genuine military grade cloak with true stealth capability and applications. Expect most of the real breakthroughs to never see the front page of/. or any other news source. Except maybe Wikileaks.
It doesn't matter if the DVD says "no copying" if he is making copies that qualify as "fair use", which would take precedence. DMCA isn't about copying anyway, it is about bypassing security encryption. The judge appears to be saying "yes, they used the software illegally and are subject to fine, but using a crack to get around a dongle is not a DMCA violation by itself.".
In otherwords, if you copy your DVD using any method, then they can still sue you for infringement but is likely not a DMCA violation if you are doing so simply to USE the DVD (fair use). If you did it to make copies to sell, that might be a different case. In short, if you are breaking encryption for your applications that qualify under fair use, thus perfectly legal (make a personal backup copy of a disk you already own, or to create a critique, to parody but not satire, for education, etc.) then there is a good chance that you won't be found to be in violation of the DMCA. Keep in mind, IANAL and even being legally in the right can put you in the poorhouse defending yourself here in the good old USA.
The same reason that police say "You can't make a video of us in action!" in states where there is no such law (and other states with those laws, if you consider the US Constitution). They do it because they think it gives them more rights, although this has never been tested. Considering you aren't actually SIGNING a contract, it is likely that a click through EULA isn't worth the paper it's written on.
EULAs are the equivalent of McDonalds saying "By accepting this beverage from our drive-thru, you are agreeing to only sip the drink with an approved straw, with your eyes closed, and not allow anyone else to have a sip of the beverage. If you fail to abide by these rules, you are subject to a fine of $150,000 and criminal prosecution." It is no less absurd.
Re:Software patents and the death of the Amiga
on
The Amiga Turns 25
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
Even when you are right, even when you have prior art, even when any idiot can see that you will win, it can cost you multiple millions to fight, and sometimes even medium sized corporations can't afford to defend themselves, as the only thing they will get at the end is the status quo. If you are doing the suing however, you stand to gain millions in awards, so it is easier to get a team of lawyers to take it on a contingent basis.
I would agree, primarily because I know how poorly farm animals are treated. I'm definitely a meat eater, but it bothers me that we don't treat animals we harvest with better care until that fateful day.
That is the point: Some people (teens) want the latest, greatest NOW, and will pay 50-60 bucks. Those of us in our 40s still love to game but won't pay that much for new games that might not run that great on our 3 year old computers anyway. By offering older games at a great price, they are *definitely* expanding their base and keeping gamers for life. Actually, I bought Bioshock 2 for about $25 and it is highly acclaimed and has been out only 6 months. It was on sale, normally $50, and honestly worth it but I am more patient, usually.
Now that I look at it, I actually spend MORE per month buying less expensive games than I did when I had no choice but to buy newer games only. Obviously, there is a limit to this, and you can't sell new blockbusters for $9.99 and make money. More so, I still buy 2 or 3 $50 games a year, about the same as I always have, so getting other games for cheap is certainly NOT keeping me from buying the big games from time to time. If anything, it is keeping gaming as my past time of choice because it offers a great value overall.
I don't personally care about "mass migrations to Linux"
To Steam's credit, they are in the middle of porting Steam and their Source games to Linux, which is a very small but growing market. They have supported Linux for dedicated servers for over 10 years. They seem pretty determined to support Linux as much as possible, even if it isn't particularly profitable. Now that Steam supports OSX and Linux soon, they are certainly positioning themselves for the future. The question is whether other games producers on Steam will port to Linux as well. So far, that has been hit and miss, but having Source support it puts them in the lead and gives other companies a trail to follow.
Actually, the Source based games have the LEAST offensive DRM. Almost everything else I have bought on Steam has more restrictive DRM. Bioshock 2, while a great game, pissed me off that I had to have a microsoft gamer's account to save games, and I am FORCED to log in each time, or I can't save game. The others had serials that I had to copy/paste from the steam client, and register online. Source games, on the other hand, simply work. Then again, Gabe (owner of Steam) has made it clear that piracy is not at the top of his list of things to worry about.
Steam has done more than offer great prices, they have increased sales. There are several games that I never would have bought if I had to pay full price. I bought Bioshock 1 when it went on sale for $15, which led me to buy Bioshock 2, once it went on sale for $25. Actually, I was going to pay the full $50 and just got lucky that it went on sale. But I have a couple dozen games that I would not have paid $50 for, simply because Steam had a reasonable price on them. A few I have seldom played, but don't feel bad because they only cost $10.
I know I'm not the only one, so it is pretty reasonable to assume that the lower prices drastically increase sales.
Um, to even compare the New Black Panther movement to the Tea Party is obscene. One wants Republican/Libertarianism, the other wants all white people to die.
I've had squirrel dumplings a few times, it is decent. Growing up, my dad (country boy turned retired military turned oil geologist) make sure we tried everything: rabbit, turtle, squirrel, and lots and lots of deer and fish. I still fish and clean and fry/bake my own. Don't hunt because I don't care for it, but there is something to the idea that if you are going to eat animals, you should be willing to actually obtain, clean and prepare them yourself at least once in a while. If someone can't handle that, then perhaps they should go vegetarian. Store bought meat is just hiring someone else to do your dirty work, which is fine as long as you don't pretend it wasn't an animal previously.
Actually, I think it could. After all, it is the license, and they *can* make a term of the license to be that under $x scenario, it would be considered to be a derivative FOR THE PURPOSE OF THAT LICENSE ONLY. Anyway, this seems to be entirely overreaching and making a case for why companies shouldn't use GPL software, and use BSD instead. I understand protecting the rights of the users, but if publishers have ZERO rights, then don't expect them to create useful software that works with GPL works.
Several things can cause a country to be poor: Lack of natural minerals or water, political instability, inability to invest in infrastructure due to a number of reasons (political, laws that make investment a poor decision), etc.), no access to the ocean for transport (like Moldova) or simple location making it difficult to trade. War. Having a single source of income for the country (banana republics, for example.) Having neighbors that don't trade with you can be a problem (North Korea). Also having a system that has no middle class (Mexico) can lead to widespread poverty, even though Mexico has more natural resources than the USA, although literacy in Mexico isn't near other nations.
Being a part of the soviet union for years and having these issues (like Moldova) is certainly an issue. Moldova is between Ukraine and Romania, and is an excellent place to grow crops, but their whole economy is too dependent on agriculture, and they have to import machinery. They do have a pretty good (and old) wine industry, but it is small. Moldova mainly needs a few more decades to heal from being a SSR for so many years.
So yes, education is certainly a factor in poverty, but education doesn't "cure" poverty and is often not the primary reason for it.
I can't speak for China, but I know that Moldova (the poorest country in Europe) is the cheapest place to build in Europe yet a large portion of the population has some college or a full degree, and an overall literacy rate that rivals the US. Perhaps due in part to being a former SSR. Poverty is not caused only by a lack of education.
The exact phrase is "coyote ugly", where you would rather gnaw off your own arm than wake her. That was before the movie/bars/etc. which attempted to change the meaning of the phrase.
Slashdot Mirror
They do, where it says "Posted by kdawson". Assuming you aren't new here.
Maybe he is blind?
There is at least one precedent for making owning machines illegal. Slot machines are regulated and it is illegal to own one in most states, even if the coin mechanism is disabled to play for free. Of course, that is what makes them l33t to own for rich folks. Kinda like Coors beer in "Smokey and the Bandit", you want it because it is illegal.
I am not sure if they store this info, but Dominos.com lets you pay by credit card on their online form, so that information very likely could be stored. And their pizza is much better to boot. I always get a lower price (the person on the phone is always rushed, hard to compare specials) AND I get points toward free food. Then again, I always use the (*)Cash option I prefer to tip in cash and the price is usually in the $15-$25 range is all. But ordering pizza by phone sucks, costs more and offers you no control over the process. Meanwhile, online ordering is a perfect example of the usefulness of the net.
Now that I think of it, if the internet was only capable of porn and ordering pizza, it would still be worth the $40 a month connect fee.
i'm having a hard time picturing a credible scenario where a woman would be prepared to have sex in exchange for a copy of a video game.
Sure, she limps when she walks, and she is gap toothed enough to eat corn on the cob through a picket fence, but in the dark, all women look like sisters. Then again, if you are trying to trade a game for sex, you probably don't look much better either, so maybe it will be a match made in heaven.
That said, this is one of the reasons I have been pro-steam for years. They make mistakes, but they have a history of dealing with it directly and honestly. If Sony ever buys them out, I will have to start pirating games, which is something I haven't done in many years.
Where do I go for sexual harassment. I'm not getting any,
Prison.
Not to mention the fact that if they truly are such a troll, they don't really care about their name, just the content of their trolls. They can already just setup a new account and start over with zero karma.
If you COPY a DVD for ANY purpose (other than the temporary copy in memory sort of a thing) and by any methods you have committed copyright infringement.
I understand that the case has nothing to do with fair use. If you read my comment, I made that quite clear that they did infringe, but the DMCA didn't apply, in the first couple sentences. I have no idea how you got the idea that I was stating otherwise. The comments on fair use were concerning the results of the finding, NOT the content of the case.
In how this applies to regular people, my statement still applies. Many would argue that "Fair Use" applies to DVDs here in America, just as it does for CDs, tapes and documents, so copying a DVD isn't infringement if you own the DVD and are only making an archival copy, which the law does allow. There really isn't any question about that. The only question WAS that in order to make the copy, it was thought you had to violate the DMCA, all in the quest to make the copy that all parties agree is legally "Fair Use". This case would indicate that it ISN'T a DMCA violation.
Unless you find a way to break a couple of thermodynamic laws, there's no real way to completely hide an
object's thermal emissions if it is warmer than its surroundings.
Not exactly true. Military jet nozzles are designed to create a smaller IR footprint, and there are several ways to reduce your thermal print. Obviously creating less heat, storing heat to prevent it from being emitted, pushing it in a direction 180 degrees away from the radar source, etc. It starts with having more imagination. The goal is NOT to make IR emissions "disappear", only to create the illusion that they have by controlling where they go. To buy time.
Sometimes, you can fool a system into thinking you are much smaller than you are, or depending on the threshold of the system, drastically increase the amount of time before you are noticed at all. Even stealth aircraft are not invisible to radar, but by the time the radar sees them, the radar site has been taken down by air to surface munitions. Same idea, only giving you a larger window before you are noticed, thus defeating better radar systems. We can already absorb and deflect microwaves fairly well, adding IR to aircraft defense would be a very big deal, for protection from radars, and from air to air and surface to air munitions. ie: Air superiority.
Once you can cloak infrared, then you have a genuine military grade cloak with true stealth capability and applications. Expect most of the real breakthroughs to never see the front page of /. or any other news source. Except maybe Wikileaks.
It doesn't matter if the DVD says "no copying" if he is making copies that qualify as "fair use", which would take precedence. DMCA isn't about copying anyway, it is about bypassing security encryption. The judge appears to be saying "yes, they used the software illegally and are subject to fine, but using a crack to get around a dongle is not a DMCA violation by itself.".
In otherwords, if you copy your DVD using any method, then they can still sue you for infringement but is likely not a DMCA violation if you are doing so simply to USE the DVD (fair use). If you did it to make copies to sell, that might be a different case. In short, if you are breaking encryption for your applications that qualify under fair use, thus perfectly legal (make a personal backup copy of a disk you already own, or to create a critique, to parody but not satire, for education, etc.) then there is a good chance that you won't be found to be in violation of the DMCA. Keep in mind, IANAL and even being legally in the right can put you in the poorhouse defending yourself here in the good old USA.
The same reason that police say "You can't make a video of us in action!" in states where there is no such law (and other states with those laws, if you consider the US Constitution). They do it because they think it gives them more rights, although this has never been tested. Considering you aren't actually SIGNING a contract, it is likely that a click through EULA isn't worth the paper it's written on.
EULAs are the equivalent of McDonalds saying "By accepting this beverage from our drive-thru, you are agreeing to only sip the drink with an approved straw, with your eyes closed, and not allow anyone else to have a sip of the beverage. If you fail to abide by these rules, you are subject to a fine of $150,000 and criminal prosecution." It is no less absurd.
Even when you are right, even when you have prior art, even when any idiot can see that you will win, it can cost you multiple millions to fight, and sometimes even medium sized corporations can't afford to defend themselves, as the only thing they will get at the end is the status quo. If you are doing the suing however, you stand to gain millions in awards, so it is easier to get a team of lawyers to take it on a contingent basis.
I would agree, primarily because I know how poorly farm animals are treated. I'm definitely a meat eater, but it bothers me that we don't treat animals we harvest with better care until that fateful day.
That is the point: Some people (teens) want the latest, greatest NOW, and will pay 50-60 bucks. Those of us in our 40s still love to game but won't pay that much for new games that might not run that great on our 3 year old computers anyway. By offering older games at a great price, they are *definitely* expanding their base and keeping gamers for life. Actually, I bought Bioshock 2 for about $25 and it is highly acclaimed and has been out only 6 months. It was on sale, normally $50, and honestly worth it but I am more patient, usually.
Now that I look at it, I actually spend MORE per month buying less expensive games than I did when I had no choice but to buy newer games only. Obviously, there is a limit to this, and you can't sell new blockbusters for $9.99 and make money. More so, I still buy 2 or 3 $50 games a year, about the same as I always have, so getting other games for cheap is certainly NOT keeping me from buying the big games from time to time. If anything, it is keeping gaming as my past time of choice because it offers a great value overall.
I don't personally care about "mass migrations to Linux"
To Steam's credit, they are in the middle of porting Steam and their Source games to Linux, which is a very small but growing market. They have supported Linux for dedicated servers for over 10 years. They seem pretty determined to support Linux as much as possible, even if it isn't particularly profitable. Now that Steam supports OSX and Linux soon, they are certainly positioning themselves for the future. The question is whether other games producers on Steam will port to Linux as well. So far, that has been hit and miss, but having Source support it puts them in the lead and gives other companies a trail to follow.
Actually, the Source based games have the LEAST offensive DRM. Almost everything else I have bought on Steam has more restrictive DRM. Bioshock 2, while a great game, pissed me off that I had to have a microsoft gamer's account to save games, and I am FORCED to log in each time, or I can't save game. The others had serials that I had to copy/paste from the steam client, and register online. Source games, on the other hand, simply work. Then again, Gabe (owner of Steam) has made it clear that piracy is not at the top of his list of things to worry about.
Steam has done more than offer great prices, they have increased sales. There are several games that I never would have bought if I had to pay full price. I bought Bioshock 1 when it went on sale for $15, which led me to buy Bioshock 2, once it went on sale for $25. Actually, I was going to pay the full $50 and just got lucky that it went on sale. But I have a couple dozen games that I would not have paid $50 for, simply because Steam had a reasonable price on them. A few I have seldom played, but don't feel bad because they only cost $10.
I know I'm not the only one, so it is pretty reasonable to assume that the lower prices drastically increase sales.
Um, to even compare the New Black Panther movement to the Tea Party is obscene. One wants Republican/Libertarianism, the other wants all white people to die.
I've had squirrel dumplings a few times, it is decent. Growing up, my dad (country boy turned retired military turned oil geologist) make sure we tried everything: rabbit, turtle, squirrel, and lots and lots of deer and fish. I still fish and clean and fry/bake my own. Don't hunt because I don't care for it, but there is something to the idea that if you are going to eat animals, you should be willing to actually obtain, clean and prepare them yourself at least once in a while. If someone can't handle that, then perhaps they should go vegetarian. Store bought meat is just hiring someone else to do your dirty work, which is fine as long as you don't pretend it wasn't an animal previously.
Actually, I think it could. After all, it is the license, and they *can* make a term of the license to be that under $x scenario, it would be considered to be a derivative FOR THE PURPOSE OF THAT LICENSE ONLY. Anyway, this seems to be entirely overreaching and making a case for why companies shouldn't use GPL software, and use BSD instead. I understand protecting the rights of the users, but if publishers have ZERO rights, then don't expect them to create useful software that works with GPL works.
If true, that is interesting. Citation?
Several things can cause a country to be poor: Lack of natural minerals or water, political instability, inability to invest in infrastructure due to a number of reasons (political, laws that make investment a poor decision), etc.), no access to the ocean for transport (like Moldova) or simple location making it difficult to trade. War. Having a single source of income for the country (banana republics, for example.) Having neighbors that don't trade with you can be a problem (North Korea). Also having a system that has no middle class (Mexico) can lead to widespread poverty, even though Mexico has more natural resources than the USA, although literacy in Mexico isn't near other nations.
Being a part of the soviet union for years and having these issues (like Moldova) is certainly an issue. Moldova is between Ukraine and Romania, and is an excellent place to grow crops, but their whole economy is too dependent on agriculture, and they have to import machinery. They do have a pretty good (and old) wine industry, but it is small. Moldova mainly needs a few more decades to heal from being a SSR for so many years.
So yes, education is certainly a factor in poverty, but education doesn't "cure" poverty and is often not the primary reason for it.
I can't speak for China, but I know that Moldova (the poorest country in Europe) is the cheapest place to build in Europe yet a large portion of the population has some college or a full degree, and an overall literacy rate that rivals the US. Perhaps due in part to being a former SSR. Poverty is not caused only by a lack of education.
The exact phrase is "coyote ugly", where you would rather gnaw off your own arm than wake her. That was before the movie/bars/etc. which attempted to change the meaning of the phrase.