Wait, so how does an ATM that only synchronizes once a day know that I just put in the right pin number? Does every ATM on the planet download a list of every ATM card and PIN in existence?
I'm not trying to be sarcastic or glib, I'm just trying to understand how the system you describe could function.
Congratulations, you are the textbook definition of "part of the problem." You are why this is happening. Ubisoft is a company trying to make money; that's what companies DO. You, however, are an amoral asshole, and the cause of all of this DRM bullshit.
I.e. they do things specifically because it amuses them, regardless of the damage it causes. That's pretty clearly not good, and I'd say it goes well past neutral and down into chaotic evil territory.
I'm curious, do people who cover up outlets disgusts you? How about those who make sure there's a childproof fence around the pool? Or the ones who put a lock on the liquor cabinet?
Watching your child every second of every day is an equally dangerous proposition, in terms of their intellectual and emotional growth, as not watching them at all. They NEED to learn to think and operate independently, and being able to designate a subset of the Internet not filled with bomb instructions and donkey porn would be an excellent service to help them do that in relative safety.
And why, pray tell, should they mark up a quote from some movie over actual discussion? And not even a particularly interesting or well phrased one, at that.
I was wondering when they'd start doing this one. Many of the attacks were done using a program called "low orbit ion cannon," essentially an opt-in botnet: run the program and it waits for a signal from a master node, then starts spamming requests at the specified target. Meaning that the participants in the attacks, far from the usual unknowing and unwilling infected, were in fact choosing specifically to join in the action. What's more, the nature of a DDoS makes proxy use counter-productive and ineffective (all attacks come from a small number of proxy IPs, being easily blockable, and you DDoS the proxy long before the target).
The end result? A list of unprotected ip addresses for a bunch of idiot thugs and 13-year old kids, not at all anonymous. Well done, geniuses.
Did you read your own link? That article lists clones, yes, but it hardly proves that the industry was "based off of clones." The only seminal game mentioned that was itself an absolute, blatant copy of another is Pong, and they paid out a $700k settlement to Magnavox for their duplication. The rest are either off-brand copyright theft or examples that clearly fall under "inspiration." No major work comes close to Zynga's bald-faced appropriations.
"Installing AMD dual core optimizer" (from the game installation)
Uh, game, I know you can't see that "Intel Inside" sticker, but still, I can save you some time...
I generally like Steam, but I really miss the option of a custom install from pre-Steam games. I've lost count of the number of times I've had to sit and watch DirectX and the Microsoft redistributable unpack their entire installation, run, and of course immediately quit, discovering their target already up to date. And doesn't automatically downloading a brand new copy of these with every game installation really defeat - or at least marginalize - their purpose?
Waaaait a minute. A six foot tall liquid-fueled rocket? On the ground at your farm, sure, that's safe. But it's a ROCKET. You obviously don't intend for it to STAY on the ground. And you don't own the airspace above a certain level.
My sympathy for your desire to experiment or engage in your hobby ends when you begin threatening to fire explosive devices into commercial airspace.
Occasionally, Netflix has newer stuff via special deals with the distributors (Whitest Kids You Know did this for their newest season, for example). Mostly, though, no: it's best used for older titles, as it's rare to find an instant watch show or movie not also out on DVD.
So yes, I supplement Netflix with Hulu to watch new stuff. But that's the thing, here: Hulu Plus doesn't affect new shows, based on their press release. It's just to watch the older stuff. Hell, two of their own examples - Buffy and the X-Files - are already on Netflix instant watch, with the other one being available on DVD. So for a dollar more per month, you get roughly the same content as Netflix, plus ads, without the DVD rental part. I can't fathom how they intend to compete.
So, what's your proposed solution to this grand miscarriage of justice?
a) Only agree to settle out of court for a higher amount b) Insist every case go to court, no mediation accepted
OF COURSE they offer to accept lower damages if they don't have to go to court. That's not extortion; that's common sense. Who would settle for less than their court payments?
If the individuals being sued had simply downloaded the file from an FTP site or something, I'd agree. Stealing the movie from a store cost them whatever lost sales it represents (and yes, I agree that this is a smaller than 100% percentage) plus the physical cost of the disc, whereas downloading it was merely the not-quite-one-copy lost sale. However, and this is important, they uploaded the movie to others. If you insist on using increasingly outdated brick-and-mortar analogies, it's like stealing the movie, making a hundred copies, and then getting all your friends together to stand on every street corner and hand out free copies.
The people who argued "it's not thievery, it's copyright infringement" throughout the RIAA's antics were right, but doesn't always work in your favor: a bitTorrent download is many times more damaging than a stolen copy.
*sigh* So when they went after file sharing sites, people whined that they were just facilitators, not themselves guilty of anything. Fair enough. "Punish the actual infringers!" slashdot cried.
Then they went after the programs and tools themselves, and people whined that they were just tools, and had perfectly legitimate uses. Very reasonable. "Punish the actual infringers!" slashdot cried.
Now they're flat-out targeting people who actively infringe copyrights. These people are BREAKING THE LAW, and more importantly, doing something immoral: they are taking someone else's work and not merely using it without due compensation, but helping others to do the same.
I'm sorry, I'm out of excuses; I'm out of pity. We won the important war. BitTorrent thrives as a legitimate tool, and merely linking to something bad is usually not itself cause for litigation. My moral outrage stops at those caught red-handed, hands thoroughly lodged in the cookie jar (and no, "someone else could have being using their personal IP or broke into their house and used their computer" is a flimsy argument at best.)
After years of reading what passes for writing on blogs and forums, I'm not at all surprised to discover that the public actually finds punctuation offensive.
I had a similar but more frustrating experience about a month ago when a storm took our connection down for about a day. After the loooong timeout period, I was given a dialogue box option to "retry" or "go offline." I selected, of course, "go offline," but after another long delay, I was told the action "could not be completed without a network connection" and for more information, I was to "visit the following webpage" (HA!).
Complaining about this issue brought a lot of fanboy cries of it not "working as intended" and "to be fixed in a patch," but some searching revealed it's also not an unusual or new problem. Indeed, I can find bug reports of this exact issue so old that the pessimist in me wonders if this "flaw" is purposeful. They've got the best of both worlds: their fans reply to all complaints about the service with "you can always use offline mode," and meanwhile, there IS no functioning offline mode due to a "bug." Anyone who tests it to "prove" you're wrong will have it work because they actually have a working network connection.
Short story shorter: despite Valve's claims to the contrary, if your connection dies, Steam may very well flat-out refuse to start.
You are presented with evidence of a possible global catastrophe in a few hours. You can do one of two things:
1) Quit what you're doing, go eat a pizza or something for your last hours alive. Maybe spend it with your loved ones. 2) Take advantage of the panic to make a profit.
Now, there are two possibilities here, resulting in four outcomes: a) the world ends, b) the world doesn't end.
1a) You're dead. Who cares? 2a) You're dead. Who cares? 1b) You had some pizza, kissed your kids, but hope they don't want to go to college 'cause you're broke. 2b) I'M RICH, BITCH!
So option 1 has outcome of x% dead, y% poor. Option 2 has outcome of x% dead, y% rich. Clearly, option 2 is the better solution.
(Yes, I know many will opt for option 1 anyway, particularly the "spend time with family" part. These people don't work on Wall Street.)
^^^ People who responded to my above post saying that this would never happen, behold: the mindset of a parent. THIS is the kind of thought process that would, given half a chance and with the best of intentions, vote the Internet into a bland, filtered, kid-friendly paste.
Slashdot Mirror
Wait, so how does an ATM that only synchronizes once a day know that I just put in the right pin number? Does every ATM on the planet download a list of every ATM card and PIN in existence?
I'm not trying to be sarcastic or glib, I'm just trying to understand how the system you describe could function.
Which, in turn, will continue to teach companies that they're fools not to sue everyone immediately for every little possible violation.
The law of unintended consequences is indeed a bitch.
Congratulations, you are the textbook definition of "part of the problem." You are why this is happening. Ubisoft is a company trying to make money; that's what companies DO. You, however, are an amoral asshole, and the cause of all of this DRM bullshit.
"For the lulz."
I.e. they do things specifically because it amuses them, regardless of the damage it causes. That's pretty clearly not good, and I'd say it goes well past neutral and down into chaotic evil territory.
I'm curious, do people who cover up outlets disgusts you? How about those who make sure there's a childproof fence around the pool? Or the ones who put a lock on the liquor cabinet?
Watching your child every second of every day is an equally dangerous proposition, in terms of their intellectual and emotional growth, as not watching them at all. They NEED to learn to think and operate independently, and being able to designate a subset of the Internet not filled with bomb instructions and donkey porn would be an excellent service to help them do that in relative safety.
And why, pray tell, should they mark up a quote from some movie over actual discussion? And not even a particularly interesting or well phrased one, at that.
But Max Payne wasn't film noir so much as a parody of film noir. At least, I assumed it was a parody. Oh god, they weren't serious, were they?
Bullshit. Libel and slander are illegal information in every free society on Earth.
Well, see, the game's not out yet. There ya go.
I was wondering when they'd start doing this one. Many of the attacks were done using a program called "low orbit ion cannon," essentially an opt-in botnet: run the program and it waits for a signal from a master node, then starts spamming requests at the specified target. Meaning that the participants in the attacks, far from the usual unknowing and unwilling infected, were in fact choosing specifically to join in the action. What's more, the nature of a DDoS makes proxy use counter-productive and ineffective (all attacks come from a small number of proxy IPs, being easily blockable, and you DDoS the proxy long before the target).
The end result? A list of unprotected ip addresses for a bunch of idiot thugs and 13-year old kids, not at all anonymous. Well done, geniuses.
Or, people could stop pirating games. That's both equally effective and equally likely.
List of Infant Mortality Rates
United States: 6.3 deaths per 100,000 live births
United Kingdom: 4.8 deaths per 100,000 live births
Oh I'm sorry, do the facts get in the way of your opinion? How rude of me.
Did you read your own link? That article lists clones, yes, but it hardly proves that the industry was "based off of clones." The only seminal game mentioned that was itself an absolute, blatant copy of another is Pong, and they paid out a $700k settlement to Magnavox for their duplication. The rest are either off-brand copyright theft or examples that clearly fall under "inspiration." No major work comes close to Zynga's bald-faced appropriations.
"Installing AMD dual core optimizer" (from the game installation)
Uh, game, I know you can't see that "Intel Inside" sticker, but still, I can save you some time...
I generally like Steam, but I really miss the option of a custom install from pre-Steam games. I've lost count of the number of times I've had to sit and watch DirectX and the Microsoft redistributable unpack their entire installation, run, and of course immediately quit, discovering their target already up to date. And doesn't automatically downloading a brand new copy of these with every game installation really defeat - or at least marginalize - their purpose?
Waaaait a minute. A six foot tall liquid-fueled rocket? On the ground at your farm, sure, that's safe. But it's a ROCKET. You obviously don't intend for it to STAY on the ground. And you don't own the airspace above a certain level.
My sympathy for your desire to experiment or engage in your hobby ends when you begin threatening to fire explosive devices into commercial airspace.
Questlove. Musician, drummer for Late Night with Jimmy Fallon house band. Relevant here because he appeared in a commercial for the Kin.
Occasionally, Netflix has newer stuff via special deals with the distributors (Whitest Kids You Know did this for their newest season, for example). Mostly, though, no: it's best used for older titles, as it's rare to find an instant watch show or movie not also out on DVD.
So yes, I supplement Netflix with Hulu to watch new stuff. But that's the thing, here: Hulu Plus doesn't affect new shows, based on their press release. It's just to watch the older stuff. Hell, two of their own examples - Buffy and the X-Files - are already on Netflix instant watch, with the other one being available on DVD. So for a dollar more per month, you get roughly the same content as Netflix, plus ads, without the DVD rental part. I can't fathom how they intend to compete.
I can imagine you getting a papercut and going to the emergency room, screaming "it's the beginning of the end!"
So, what's your proposed solution to this grand miscarriage of justice?
a) Only agree to settle out of court for a higher amount
b) Insist every case go to court, no mediation accepted
OF COURSE they offer to accept lower damages if they don't have to go to court. That's not extortion; that's common sense. Who would settle for less than their court payments?
If the individuals being sued had simply downloaded the file from an FTP site or something, I'd agree. Stealing the movie from a store cost them whatever lost sales it represents (and yes, I agree that this is a smaller than 100% percentage) plus the physical cost of the disc, whereas downloading it was merely the not-quite-one-copy lost sale. However, and this is important, they uploaded the movie to others. If you insist on using increasingly outdated brick-and-mortar analogies, it's like stealing the movie, making a hundred copies, and then getting all your friends together to stand on every street corner and hand out free copies.
The people who argued "it's not thievery, it's copyright infringement" throughout the RIAA's antics were right, but doesn't always work in your favor: a bitTorrent download is many times more damaging than a stolen copy.
*sigh* So when they went after file sharing sites, people whined that they were just facilitators, not themselves guilty of anything. Fair enough. "Punish the actual infringers!" slashdot cried.
Then they went after the programs and tools themselves, and people whined that they were just tools, and had perfectly legitimate uses. Very reasonable. "Punish the actual infringers!" slashdot cried.
Now they're flat-out targeting people who actively infringe copyrights. These people are BREAKING THE LAW, and more importantly, doing something immoral: they are taking someone else's work and not merely using it without due compensation, but helping others to do the same.
I'm sorry, I'm out of excuses; I'm out of pity. We won the important war. BitTorrent thrives as a legitimate tool, and merely linking to something bad is usually not itself cause for litigation. My moral outrage stops at those caught red-handed, hands thoroughly lodged in the cookie jar (and no, "someone else could have being using their personal IP or broke into their house and used their computer" is a flimsy argument at best.)
After years of reading what passes for writing on blogs and forums, I'm not at all surprised to discover that the public actually finds punctuation offensive.
I had a similar but more frustrating experience about a month ago when a storm took our connection down for about a day. After the loooong timeout period, I was given a dialogue box option to "retry" or "go offline." I selected, of course, "go offline," but after another long delay, I was told the action "could not be completed without a network connection" and for more information, I was to "visit the following webpage" (HA!).
Complaining about this issue brought a lot of fanboy cries of it not "working as intended" and "to be fixed in a patch," but some searching revealed it's also not an unusual or new problem. Indeed, I can find bug reports of this exact issue so old that the pessimist in me wonders if this "flaw" is purposeful. They've got the best of both worlds: their fans reply to all complaints about the service with "you can always use offline mode," and meanwhile, there IS no functioning offline mode due to a "bug." Anyone who tests it to "prove" you're wrong will have it work because they actually have a working network connection.
Short story shorter: despite Valve's claims to the contrary, if your connection dies, Steam may very well flat-out refuse to start.
You are presented with evidence of a possible global catastrophe in a few hours. You can do one of two things:
1) Quit what you're doing, go eat a pizza or something for your last hours alive. Maybe spend it with your loved ones.
2) Take advantage of the panic to make a profit.
Now, there are two possibilities here, resulting in four outcomes: a) the world ends, b) the world doesn't end.
1a) You're dead. Who cares?
2a) You're dead. Who cares?
1b) You had some pizza, kissed your kids, but hope they don't want to go to college 'cause you're broke.
2b) I'M RICH, BITCH!
So option 1 has outcome of x% dead, y% poor. Option 2 has outcome of x% dead, y% rich. Clearly, option 2 is the better solution.
(Yes, I know many will opt for option 1 anyway, particularly the "spend time with family" part. These people don't work on Wall Street.)
^^^ People who responded to my above post saying that this would never happen, behold: the mindset of a parent. THIS is the kind of thought process that would, given half a chance and with the best of intentions, vote the Internet into a bland, filtered, kid-friendly paste.