If your case is good but you can't afford or attract a good lawyer, well, sucks to be you.
Yeah, that's awesome. Justice for those that can afford it, for everyone else, oh well, stop being so poor already.
It's reasons like that why companies like Walmart are able to commit labor violations in every state with impunity, because they know no lawyer is going to touch any case against them unless it's egregious (i.e., results in serious injury or death) and/or a slam dunk, and their million dollar lawyers are able to ensure that pretty much no case against them is ever gonna be a slam dunk.
This is truly sad, and it means American laws have been totally taken over by corporate interests.
What's even sadder is that everyone says this, and acknowledges it ad nauseum, yet nothing ever changes at all.
Where the hell are all the people that see the writing on the wall on fucking election day? That's what I want to know. We see rulings handed down like the abomination that was Citizen's United v. FEC and nobody does a goddamned thing about it. We bitch and moan and bitch some more about how we're being bent over by our ISP's, Telecoms, Big Media, Big Oil, Big Pharma, Big Retail,...does anyone actually DO anything about it? Half the eligible voters in this country don't even take the time to go down to their polling place and exercise their constitutional right to cast a ballot...and how often are elections, once a year, if that?
I live in a college town full of self-professed "socialists" that talk big of tearing it all down and starting over again...and then their Dominos Extra-Larges show up and they get back to playing the newest generic shooter on their Xbox 360 and taking bong rips. People that sit here and rail against exploitation in Asia, yet every single thing in their home comes from either Walmart, Target, or Best Buy. Everyone is an activist until it actually involves doing something other than sitting on their ass and tuning into tonight's America's Idol's Got Survivor Skills: Extreme Shore Edition.
Sorry for my language, but I'm tired of it. If you guys really want things to change, that means a little sacrifice, either in time, money, or comfort. As long as all we do is sit here and bitch about it, then this country is never going to change. If we're not going to get off our ass and vote them out, then our only other options are to either get used to it, or deal with it like our Founding Father's did.
Agreed...without Noscript, Adblock, and Greasemonkey, Firefox is pretty much useless to me. If those 3 developers are able to keep up with the release cycles, great, but if they can't, that's a dealbreaker for me.
Same here. Most decent games are played through multiple times in my household. Hell, I've played through Borderlands from start to finish at least 6 times by now...
Just more evidence of a clueless game developer equating piracy and used games as lost sales. They're gonna be sadly mistaken when they look at their balance sheet. People buy used games because the game is not worth the retail price to them. Nothing, short of a more aggressive price structure that goes down over time, is going to change that. People are only ever going to pay what they feel a game is worth...and not a penny more.
These companies act like they're a necessity, but they're sorely mistaken.
They killed the game years ago, this is just it's final death-throes. No big loss here, really.
I wonder how long it will be before Final Fantasy XI goes offline? It's almost as old (although, the abysmal failure that is Final Fantasy XIV may keep it around for much longer than anticiapted).
If I want to rent a movie tonight, I can't. Impossible. No video rental stores because everybody used Netflix. If I want to get opinions of people who work in the video store or my neighbors, I can't. Oh yeah, and all of that money leaves my community, too.
No Redboxes near you? Where do you live, the bush in Alaska? Actually, scratch that, my mom DOES live in the bush in Alaska and goes to Redbox every other day. It's 30 minutes into town to get to it, but it's certainly not impossible. Well, maybe in the winter I would say yeah, it's impossible unless you're snowshoeing there...
MP3 downloads aren't the same as a CD Audio CD. Not even close if you have an actual stereo system. Oh yeah, and all of that money leaves my community, too.
If you're going with the audiophile argument, then you should probably ditch the CD's and get yourself a good record player or reel to reel. CD's are still one's and zero's, just the same as an MP3. There may be more of them, but it's still a trade off. Just like you likely don't care enough to deal with the hassle of wiping down records and changing styli for the extra fidelity, many more don't care enough to deal with the hassle of physical media for it either.
Browsing book stores is impossible since there often aren't any. Going to book signings or other such events are impossible. Oh yeah, and all of that money leaves my community, too.
This one I'll give you, it IS sometimes hard to find decent, non-big box bookstores anymore, but if you want to blame anyone, blame the people you live around. There are a bunch where I live; granted, it's a college town.
If you're happy sitting in front of your computer mindlessly consuming, sending your money out of your community to god knows who, and interacting with no actual humans in the process, then good for you. I feel that my life has been significantly negatively impacted by the bad decisions of peope interested in nothing more than their own wallets.
Different strokes for different folks. Personally, I love the fact that I can get reviews and recommendations that go BEYOND the circle of people I'm most familiar with. If it wasn't for online communities there are tons of bands, movies, books, and games I LOVE that I likely never even would have heard of. Not only that, but those huge online retailers (like Amazon and Netflix) aren't some enormous single building somewhere like the Zorg Headquarters, there are dozens of distribution centers all over the country and world. There is probably one not far from where you live and you don't even know it (unless you live in the bush in Alaska).
It's not like YOU can't be the driving force in your community for more group activities. If it bothers you that there isn't more opportunity for face to face interaction when it comes to media, start a movie club, or a music club, or a "We don't want to sit in front of our computers mindlessly consuming" club. Back when I was in school, I was in an anime club...I didn't even like much anime, but I enjoyed hanging out with the group. Point is, there sure as hell wasn't anywhere local to buy anime, really, but that didn't stop people from getting together.
I hear a lot of arguments that social media and the internet and everything is making us less social overall, but I honestly still feel that if people choose to be social, they will be. We're not helpless.
We seem to manage this and public health care for all with ease, I wonder why the US cant do the same?
Because here you get called a pinko commie socialist entitlement whore when you advocate helping anyone financially that isn't a multi-million dollar corporation.
Hell, there are large groups of people in this country advocating for the end of Medicare, which is basically our version of Public Health Care for older people that everyone pays into for decades. I guess those old people are just a bunch of entitlement whores that should go die already and stop costing us money being sick and all. They already managed to steal their paid-off homes from them with reverse mortgages, so now they're just a liability with nothing left to take anymore...
I wish I knew why so many people behave this way when it comes to politics. It's really sad how people don't vote for the candidate they want in office as much as they vote against the candidate they don't.
I had hopes for a real 3rd party in my lifetime (and no, I don't count the Tea Party as a 3rd party, because that'd be like calling blue dog Dems a 3rd Party) but the big money interests won't let that happen. It's too convenient to their interests to keep us fighting over the crumbs. Now I honestly believe only open revolution will change our government.
Orwell had it fucking right. We've always been at war with Eurasia. Or was it Eastasia? Better pour myself another glass of Victory Gin and pop on the telescreen, it's about time for the Two Minute Hate, and all this thinking makes my head hurt...
PS: we also, as a country, need to stop looking down on blue-collar work. Not everyone needs a college degree. We really need to have trade schools at the high school and college levels.
This, oh man, a thousand times this.
There's only so many white collar jobs out there. Everyone gets fed this idea that you go to college, get a magic piece of paper that says you're worth hiring, instantly get a job making a decent living, have 1.8 kids, white picket fence and it's all such crap. Maybe 30 years ago that was the case, but today it's actually the opposite. I have friends with Masters Degrees that are living with their parents working in retail because there's nothing else and they have mountains of student loan debt to pay off. Several people I know were going to school looking to become teachers that have since dropped out and just resigned themselves to working as waitresses full time, or delivering pizzas.
Meanwhile, people that everyone made fun of for not going to college right out of high school started their own companies doing things like landscaping and cleaning and such and are doing much better than the college grads. Everything we've been told is just so backwards anymore...
The only college grads I know that are really anywhere near where they expected to be when they started school are the people that went into nursing and health related fields. They're making money hand over fist because people are getting sicker as a whole, and costs are so inflated it's almost like the beginnings of a new bubble, the "Health Care Bubble". So sad...
And then, by the time Africa starts getting a large middle class, in like 2050, manufacturing will move back here to the Americas because by that time our economies will have collapsed, we'll be the third world countries with all the slave labor, and people will be complaining about cheap American made crap the world over...
The words may change, but the song always remains the same...
Yeah, those same friends, too. Money has been perverting our political process since the origin of this country, and until we find a way to divorce the power the super wealthy people (and corporations that are now legally people thanks to the abomination that was the Citizens United ruling) our government will NEVER represent the will of the people.
I really don't care which side of the aisle you're on, if you're taking money from lobbyists, you're taking bribes.
I think Anonymous and Lulzsec are going to be our shock troops in the inevitable cyber war that will soon be breaking out. Right now they are pissing a lot of people off, but at the end of the day, the only reason they are effective at what they do is because of laziness, greed, and ignorance when it comes to internet security. It's shocking to me how many of these huge billion dollar companies are doing stupid crap like storing customer information in plaintext files. I mean, that's just ridiculous, and honestly, I'd rather people looking for lulz get a hold of that data than some scumbag Eastern European Identity Thief that is going to take out credit cards in my name and all sorts of other garbage.
There have already been several localities (municipal level) that tried to setup their own internet services for their residents, because they were unhappy with what the local cableco and telco were willing to provide. So the cableco and telco have sent lobbyists to the local city councils and state legislative bodies and are having laws written to prevent these forms of competition from even getting off the ground.
Two infuriating examples I can think of off the top of my head, Wilson, North Carolina and Monticello, Minnesota. The North Carolina case involving Time Warner, and the Monticello case involving TDS.
Both are similar stories, the ISPs that provided service told residents that providing 21st century internet access was too costly, the residents took matters into their own hands and tried to create their own community-based ISP, and the majors consequently spent millions of dollars trying to prevent them from doing so.
The Wilson, NC ISP, Greenlight, actually made it through all the legal wrangling and were able to actually launch and provide service to their community. The Monticello, MN one ended up being a moot point because, ironically enough, TDS decided they were mistaken and actually COULD provide service to their community, and started laying fiber left and right all over the community. Current pricing for internet (and this is ONLY in Monticello): $50 a month for 50MB/20MB. Obviously, the community based ISP effort ended up being tabled. At the time, it was the fastest broadband in the state, and it was cheaper than anyone else was paying for anything over 3 meg as well
For that reason I pray for the day when we get some real competition in my area. I'm tired of being bent over by Charter...
I never rent movies anymore, so I haven't really jumped on the Redbox thing like a lot of other people, but now that they're renting games it's worth it to me. There are so many freaking 5-10 hour games anymore, I can bang that out in one or two days. Plus I have a Redbox literally right downstairs from my apartment. Win-win:)
It's foolish to base any of your decisions on what retail cell salesmen say or do anyway. I've never been outright lied to as often as I have by someone trying to sign me up for a cell phone plan.
Well, except for someone trying to sell me a TV or laptop at BestBuy. They like to bend the truth and hide things, too.
If Caveat Emptor ever applies in life, it sure as hell does when it comes to electronic devices in a retail setting...
I get what you're saying about tactics, but even in those days, there was infantry and all sorts of non-"get in a line and fire in turn at the other guy" combat. It may not have been considered 'gentlemanly' according to the rules of war of the day, but it occurred. For instance, a FPS set during the Seven Years War with you playing the part of a Mohawk warrior.
I think the tactical style of play and necessity for cooperation inherent in a game where you're not able to be, for all intents and purposes, Rambo hip firing a pair of M60's would be a refreshing change. When you only get 3 shots a minute you better make those shots count, and by placing the story outside of the common battles that were really just two groups facing each other, there is a lot of breathing room without trampling all over history.
I don't know. Maybe it would work, maybe it wouldn't. I'm just bored with the same tired crap like everyone else I guess...
They're only charging $0 if your media is through iTunes.
Any other media you may want to store on the cloud will require a $24.99 a year subscription.
Not to mention the shocking amount of using the wrong spelling of a word that slips through anymore, like they're/their/there, then/than, accept/except.
My English Comp professor used to outright reject papers with more than 2 or 3 errors like this...people complained, but really, how hard is it to proofread something before you submit it? Apparently damn hard...
Slashdot Mirror
If your case is good but you can't afford or attract a good lawyer, well, sucks to be you.
Yeah, that's awesome. Justice for those that can afford it, for everyone else, oh well, stop being so poor already.
It's reasons like that why companies like Walmart are able to commit labor violations in every state with impunity, because they know no lawyer is going to touch any case against them unless it's egregious (i.e., results in serious injury or death) and/or a slam dunk, and their million dollar lawyers are able to ensure that pretty much no case against them is ever gonna be a slam dunk.
Can't wait til we get this here in the States, because if there's one thing we need in this country, it's more chocolate products...
also you want proprietary game developers to publish games for it, and that's not going to be easy.
That's gonna be just about impossible, you mean. Not gonna happen; they're too attached to DRM.
This is truly sad, and it means American laws have been totally taken over by corporate interests.
What's even sadder is that everyone says this, and acknowledges it ad nauseum, yet nothing ever changes at all.
Where the hell are all the people that see the writing on the wall on fucking election day? That's what I want to know. We see rulings handed down like the abomination that was Citizen's United v. FEC and nobody does a goddamned thing about it. We bitch and moan and bitch some more about how we're being bent over by our ISP's, Telecoms, Big Media, Big Oil, Big Pharma, Big Retail,...does anyone actually DO anything about it? Half the eligible voters in this country don't even take the time to go down to their polling place and exercise their constitutional right to cast a ballot...and how often are elections, once a year, if that?
I live in a college town full of self-professed "socialists" that talk big of tearing it all down and starting over again...and then their Dominos Extra-Larges show up and they get back to playing the newest generic shooter on their Xbox 360 and taking bong rips. People that sit here and rail against exploitation in Asia, yet every single thing in their home comes from either Walmart, Target, or Best Buy. Everyone is an activist until it actually involves doing something other than sitting on their ass and tuning into tonight's America's Idol's Got Survivor Skills: Extreme Shore Edition.
Sorry for my language, but I'm tired of it. If you guys really want things to change, that means a little sacrifice, either in time, money, or comfort. As long as all we do is sit here and bitch about it, then this country is never going to change. If we're not going to get off our ass and vote them out, then our only other options are to either get used to it, or deal with it like our Founding Father's did.
Agreed...without Noscript, Adblock, and Greasemonkey, Firefox is pretty much useless to me. If those 3 developers are able to keep up with the release cycles, great, but if they can't, that's a dealbreaker for me.
Have they addressed the fact that Firefox eats memory like Amy Winehouse smokes crack?
Same here. Most decent games are played through multiple times in my household. Hell, I've played through Borderlands from start to finish at least 6 times by now...
Just more evidence of a clueless game developer equating piracy and used games as lost sales. They're gonna be sadly mistaken when they look at their balance sheet. People buy used games because the game is not worth the retail price to them. Nothing, short of a more aggressive price structure that goes down over time, is going to change that. People are only ever going to pay what they feel a game is worth...and not a penny more.
These companies act like they're a necessity, but they're sorely mistaken.
Who the hell would pay real money for this crippleware bullshit?
Oh well, the Resident Evil franchise has sucked since the Playstation 1-era anyway...although I may download this just to prove a point.
They killed the game years ago, this is just it's final death-throes. No big loss here, really.
I wonder how long it will be before Final Fantasy XI goes offline? It's almost as old (although, the abysmal failure that is Final Fantasy XIV may keep it around for much longer than anticiapted).
Oh, yeah, I forgot: Christian-Bashing is the last acceptable and politically-correct form of prejudice and ignorant hatred.
No actually, that would be overweight people.
If I want to rent a movie tonight, I can't. Impossible. No video rental stores because everybody used Netflix. If I want to get opinions of people who work in the video store or my neighbors, I can't. Oh yeah, and all of that money leaves my community, too.
No Redboxes near you? Where do you live, the bush in Alaska? Actually, scratch that, my mom DOES live in the bush in Alaska and goes to Redbox every other day. It's 30 minutes into town to get to it, but it's certainly not impossible. Well, maybe in the winter I would say yeah, it's impossible unless you're snowshoeing there...
MP3 downloads aren't the same as a CD Audio CD. Not even close if you have an actual stereo system. Oh yeah, and all of that money leaves my community, too.
If you're going with the audiophile argument, then you should probably ditch the CD's and get yourself a good record player or reel to reel. CD's are still one's and zero's, just the same as an MP3. There may be more of them, but it's still a trade off. Just like you likely don't care enough to deal with the hassle of wiping down records and changing styli for the extra fidelity, many more don't care enough to deal with the hassle of physical media for it either.
Browsing book stores is impossible since there often aren't any. Going to book signings or other such events are impossible. Oh yeah, and all of that money leaves my community, too.
This one I'll give you, it IS sometimes hard to find decent, non-big box bookstores anymore, but if you want to blame anyone, blame the people you live around. There are a bunch where I live; granted, it's a college town.
If you're happy sitting in front of your computer mindlessly consuming, sending your money out of your community to god knows who, and interacting with no actual humans in the process, then good for you. I feel that my life has been significantly negatively impacted by the bad decisions of peope interested in nothing more than their own wallets.
Different strokes for different folks. Personally, I love the fact that I can get reviews and recommendations that go BEYOND the circle of people I'm most familiar with. If it wasn't for online communities there are tons of bands, movies, books, and games I LOVE that I likely never even would have heard of. Not only that, but those huge online retailers (like Amazon and Netflix) aren't some enormous single building somewhere like the Zorg Headquarters, there are dozens of distribution centers all over the country and world. There is probably one not far from where you live and you don't even know it (unless you live in the bush in Alaska).
It's not like YOU can't be the driving force in your community for more group activities. If it bothers you that there isn't more opportunity for face to face interaction when it comes to media, start a movie club, or a music club, or a "We don't want to sit in front of our computers mindlessly consuming" club. Back when I was in school, I was in an anime club...I didn't even like much anime, but I enjoyed hanging out with the group. Point is, there sure as hell wasn't anywhere local to buy anime, really, but that didn't stop people from getting together.
I hear a lot of arguments that social media and the internet and everything is making us less social overall, but I honestly still feel that if people choose to be social, they will be. We're not helpless.
We seem to manage this and public health care for all with ease, I wonder why the US cant do the same?
Because here you get called a pinko commie socialist entitlement whore when you advocate helping anyone financially that isn't a multi-million dollar corporation.
Hell, there are large groups of people in this country advocating for the end of Medicare, which is basically our version of Public Health Care for older people that everyone pays into for decades. I guess those old people are just a bunch of entitlement whores that should go die already and stop costing us money being sick and all. They already managed to steal their paid-off homes from them with reverse mortgages, so now they're just a liability with nothing left to take anymore...
I wish I knew why so many people behave this way when it comes to politics. It's really sad how people don't vote for the candidate they want in office as much as they vote against the candidate they don't.
I had hopes for a real 3rd party in my lifetime (and no, I don't count the Tea Party as a 3rd party, because that'd be like calling blue dog Dems a 3rd Party) but the big money interests won't let that happen. It's too convenient to their interests to keep us fighting over the crumbs. Now I honestly believe only open revolution will change our government.
Orwell had it fucking right. We've always been at war with Eurasia. Or was it Eastasia? Better pour myself another glass of Victory Gin and pop on the telescreen, it's about time for the Two Minute Hate, and all this thinking makes my head hurt...
PS: we also, as a country, need to stop looking down on blue-collar work. Not everyone needs a college degree. We really need to have trade schools at the high school and college levels.
This, oh man, a thousand times this.
There's only so many white collar jobs out there. Everyone gets fed this idea that you go to college, get a magic piece of paper that says you're worth hiring, instantly get a job making a decent living, have 1.8 kids, white picket fence and it's all such crap. Maybe 30 years ago that was the case, but today it's actually the opposite. I have friends with Masters Degrees that are living with their parents working in retail because there's nothing else and they have mountains of student loan debt to pay off. Several people I know were going to school looking to become teachers that have since dropped out and just resigned themselves to working as waitresses full time, or delivering pizzas.
Meanwhile, people that everyone made fun of for not going to college right out of high school started their own companies doing things like landscaping and cleaning and such and are doing much better than the college grads. Everything we've been told is just so backwards anymore...
The only college grads I know that are really anywhere near where they expected to be when they started school are the people that went into nursing and health related fields. They're making money hand over fist because people are getting sicker as a whole, and costs are so inflated it's almost like the beginnings of a new bubble, the "Health Care Bubble". So sad...
And then, by the time Africa starts getting a large middle class, in like 2050, manufacturing will move back here to the Americas because by that time our economies will have collapsed, we'll be the third world countries with all the slave labor, and people will be complaining about cheap American made crap the world over...
The words may change, but the song always remains the same...
Oh, he mad.
Yeah, those same friends, too. Money has been perverting our political process since the origin of this country, and until we find a way to divorce the power the super wealthy people (and corporations that are now legally people thanks to the abomination that was the Citizens United ruling) our government will NEVER represent the will of the people.
I really don't care which side of the aisle you're on, if you're taking money from lobbyists, you're taking bribes.
I think Anonymous and Lulzsec are going to be our shock troops in the inevitable cyber war that will soon be breaking out. Right now they are pissing a lot of people off, but at the end of the day, the only reason they are effective at what they do is because of laziness, greed, and ignorance when it comes to internet security. It's shocking to me how many of these huge billion dollar companies are doing stupid crap like storing customer information in plaintext files. I mean, that's just ridiculous, and honestly, I'd rather people looking for lulz get a hold of that data than some scumbag Eastern European Identity Thief that is going to take out credit cards in my name and all sorts of other garbage.
There have already been several localities (municipal level) that tried to setup their own internet services for their residents, because they were unhappy with what the local cableco and telco were willing to provide. So the cableco and telco have sent lobbyists to the local city councils and state legislative bodies and are having laws written to prevent these forms of competition from even getting off the ground.
Two infuriating examples I can think of off the top of my head, Wilson, North Carolina and Monticello, Minnesota. The North Carolina case involving Time Warner, and the Monticello case involving TDS.
Both are similar stories, the ISPs that provided service told residents that providing 21st century internet access was too costly, the residents took matters into their own hands and tried to create their own community-based ISP, and the majors consequently spent millions of dollars trying to prevent them from doing so.
The Wilson, NC ISP, Greenlight, actually made it through all the legal wrangling and were able to actually launch and provide service to their community. The Monticello, MN one ended up being a moot point because, ironically enough, TDS decided they were mistaken and actually COULD provide service to their community, and started laying fiber left and right all over the community. Current pricing for internet (and this is ONLY in Monticello): $50 a month for 50MB/20MB. Obviously, the community based ISP effort ended up being tabled. At the time, it was the fastest broadband in the state, and it was cheaper than anyone else was paying for anything over 3 meg as well
For that reason I pray for the day when we get some real competition in my area. I'm tired of being bent over by Charter...
I never rent movies anymore, so I haven't really jumped on the Redbox thing like a lot of other people, but now that they're renting games it's worth it to me. There are so many freaking 5-10 hour games anymore, I can bang that out in one or two days. Plus I have a Redbox literally right downstairs from my apartment. Win-win :)
It's foolish to base any of your decisions on what retail cell salesmen say or do anyway. I've never been outright lied to as often as I have by someone trying to sign me up for a cell phone plan.
Well, except for someone trying to sell me a TV or laptop at BestBuy. They like to bend the truth and hide things, too.
If Caveat Emptor ever applies in life, it sure as hell does when it comes to electronic devices in a retail setting...
I get what you're saying about tactics, but even in those days, there was infantry and all sorts of non-"get in a line and fire in turn at the other guy" combat. It may not have been considered 'gentlemanly' according to the rules of war of the day, but it occurred. For instance, a FPS set during the Seven Years War with you playing the part of a Mohawk warrior.
I think the tactical style of play and necessity for cooperation inherent in a game where you're not able to be, for all intents and purposes, Rambo hip firing a pair of M60's would be a refreshing change. When you only get 3 shots a minute you better make those shots count, and by placing the story outside of the common battles that were really just two groups facing each other, there is a lot of breathing room without trampling all over history.
I don't know. Maybe it would work, maybe it wouldn't. I'm just bored with the same tired crap like everyone else I guess...
So getting freedom fondled by the TSA is okay, but recording official agents on official business representing the government is a no go?
Yeah, right...
They're only charging $0 if your media is through iTunes. Any other media you may want to store on the cloud will require a $24.99 a year subscription.
Not to mention the shocking amount of using the wrong spelling of a word that slips through anymore, like they're/their/there, then/than, accept/except.
My English Comp professor used to outright reject papers with more than 2 or 3 errors like this...people complained, but really, how hard is it to proofread something before you submit it? Apparently damn hard...