And they still would have been in breach of contract. It doesn't matter what their intentions were... a better machine, more easily serviceable... doesn't matter. They broke the contract, they pay the penalty.
See, that's a good point. If the RIAA came down with the jackboots and the truncheons on some operation that was cranking out hundreds or thousands of pirated CDs and wanted to impose the same scale of penalties on them as they are trying to burden these college students with, I don't think anyone on Slashdot would even defend those pirates.
But trying to sue a college student into the poorhouse because they shared some tracks off of a Beyonce CD using the same scale of penalties is ridiculous. And the RIAA should know this. But they don't seem to care.
You got me. I guess maybe since there's not entire chapters of the HP books devoted to the knitting of magic robes and wooly hats, it didn't need to be approved?
Honestly, what I'd like to see a game company try (to see if it works) is to have a dual leveling system. Have one set of levels for combat and one set for professions. So, you could have a character who is a 14th level dwarf warrior but he's also a 32nd level armorsmith.
As for making a game world more dynamic... I don't know... I've had some ideas on that, but I'm not sure if they're easily workable in a MMORPG setting. (What I mean is the coding could be a real bitch to do.)
Possibly. Or the judge could not be fond of ex parte discovery.
See, that, to me, is a sham (ex parte discovery). The RIAA doesn't know who specifically is infringing on their IP. Hence the John Doe lawsuits and the motions for ex parte discovery. But then the students who are the targets of these lawsuits don't know what may be used against them in court and help prepare their own defense because if they show up to the discovery proceedings, it actually strengthens the RIAA's case because now the RIAA knows who they are.
But what the hell do I know... most of the law I know is from Law & Order and serving on jury duty. (Okay, and printing out a lot of legal documents over the last seven years.)
The thing is, most, if not all MMORPGs out there are that static for a reason. It allows everyone the chance to do that quest, get that special item, whatever.
I don't know if you've ever logged onto a new WoW server the day it goes online, but people race to be the first to level 20, level 30, and so on. They want to be the first on that server to down Ragnaros (well, okay, honestly, I'm not sure they even bother with that any more...), or the first player in the Outlands, or whatever goal they set for themselves. And that's why WoW is that static. Do you want to lose out on ever even starting a huge quest because some guy who lives in his mom's basement and stayed up for 48 hours straight beat you (and everyone else) to all the goals in the game? I think you'd rightfully be a little pissed that you're paying the same fee as everyone else, but because someone beat you to Quest X, no one else can ever do it.
And yes, WoW doesn't allow the whole "level 1 with max profession skill", but I honestly can't think of a game that does allow it. Did EQ? Perhaps they did (it's been years since I played), but I remember that they made it cost so much to raise any profession that it wasn't worth trying to do it as a level 1 unless you had a couple sugar daddies supporting you. DAOC might have let you, but it was so much more cost effective to go out and level and melt down the loot you got to save costs.
Did the publishers of those books make a deal with the publishers of the Harry Potter books? Unless we're talking about those "fanfic" Chinese HP books, I'll bet they did.
And there's the crux of the matter. If the publishers/creators/whatever of this lexicon had sat down and hammered out a deal with the HP publishers, there wouldn't be a court case. But it looks like they're trying to do an end run around those publishers, possibly in order to keep all the potential cash for themselves.
Which is damned foolish, considering the amount of money they're going to have spend on lawyers.
Any possible praise (ha ha) a manager would get from corporate higher-ups for following this policy is going to be more then offset by all the bad press and lost sales because of any customers who are turned away by hearing of this story. It takes a lot of effort to get new loyal customers, much less effort to retain loyal customers, but it's exceptionally easy to piss them off to the point where they won't come back.
"Hey, we can't find every single person in Canada who is pirating music, eh? So what we're going to do, you hosers, is charge extra for all the legal downloads. And we're going to charge for every single one of them back to 1996, eh?"
See, the punishment isn't so much the extra tax on all future purchases. Okay, if you add a new tax, people can decide whether or not they want to continue purchasing the same item with that new tax added on. But when you make it retroactive back over a decade, that is a punishment. The purchasers can't decide to un-buy something they bought a decade ago, or five years ago.
Check me if I'm wrong, but with your example of Radiohead, aren't they going to a "pay whatever you want" price format for their latest album as a download? Why yes, they are. Yeah, they're also offering a high(er)-priced "with all the extras" version if you want a physical copy. But they're hardly asking for extortionate prices.
Okay, look at it... the remake of Battlestar Gallactica has been good. Solid rating, decent storyline. Okay, the writers love "All Along the Watchtower", but hey...
Before BSG (again, the remake) came out, name another remake of an old series where the remake was worth a damn? And no, Star Trek: The Next Generation doesn't count. That wasn't a remake. (Okay, they did rehash some original series episodes....) And speaking of the original series... I remember watching reruns of it as a kid. I thought it was awesome. Then, years after my childhood years, TNG came out. I thought it was awesome. But when I went back to watch some old original series episodes, man... they sucked. And yeah, part of it is that I got older and more discriminating in my tastes, and that even the crappy special effects in season 1 of TNG beat the best special effects in the original series.
Honestly, though... look at Knight Rider without the lens of childhood awe. The show was not that good. It wasn't bad, by any means, but it wasn't good. What's next? A remake of "Barney Miller"? "Hill Street Blues"?
And what was "Bionic Woman" up against in that time slot anyway?
"Are you a moron? Did you buy a computer and then say 'Now what?' Have you been known to sit in front of the monitor, drool and say 'nuuuuurrrrrr'? Then we have just the material for you! We will happily sell you DVDs of basic knowledge that you could get from any 12-year old with a functioning brain stem, but we charge you an arm and a leg for it! Come on, you obviously bought a computer for no freaking reason, so we're hoping you're just as clueless to buy our software!
Act now and we'll keep siphoning money from your bank account in easy monthly payments of $24.95!"
The thing is, you have no guarantee that the stock will go down. Yeah, you could sell 10,000 shares of COMPANY short, but if the stock goes up instead of down, you lose money.
The only way it would be fraud would be if you were the CEO (or some other company officer or had insider information) of COMPANY and used your position to easily manipulate the stock price.
And, I think even with all the bone-headed things that Darl McBride has done, we really can't say he's so stupid as to try and pull off this kind of stock manipulation with no expectation of getting caught. (I'm not saying he did. I'm saying if he did, he should reasonably expect to get caught at it.)
I actually liked Quark. Sure, he was a bit of a clown. But how many dishonest, conniving, backstabbing characters were actually main characters in a Star Trek series? (okay, he was really supporting cast, but he got a good bit of screen time.) You couldn't have a character like that (dishonest, out for himself, greedy, etc.) on TNG every week because eventually Worf would just toss him in the brig, or Riker would shoot him or something. But it worked on DS9 because Quark wasn't in Starfleet, and the worst thing that could really happen to Quark was him getting tossed in the clink by Odo. (Which Odo did on more then one occassion.)
Plus, Quark (and the Quark/Odo interactions) had some of the best lines of the series.
Actually, I think the abject fucking shittiness of Voyager was due to the new characters and concepts absolutely sucking in execution.
Don't get me wrong, the concept was good. Hell, I'll go so far as to say the concept was great. But the results fell really fucking flat. Janeway was one of the most boring captains ever. I mean, let's face it... in TNG, there were probably more episodes that focused on Riker then Picard, but Picard was still interesting as a character. Janeway? Booooooring. Tom Paris? Booooooring. Chakotay? Okay, there was potential there, but it was lost. Harry Kim? Again, potential, but it was lost. Neelix? Tell me I'm not the only/.er who wanted to strangle the character....
Slashdot Mirror
And they still would have been in breach of contract. It doesn't matter what their intentions were... a better machine, more easily serviceable... doesn't matter. They broke the contract, they pay the penalty.
See, that's a good point. If the RIAA came down with the jackboots and the truncheons on some operation that was cranking out hundreds or thousands of pirated CDs and wanted to impose the same scale of penalties on them as they are trying to burden these college students with, I don't think anyone on Slashdot would even defend those pirates.
But trying to sue a college student into the poorhouse because they shared some tracks off of a Beyonce CD using the same scale of penalties is ridiculous. And the RIAA should know this. But they don't seem to care.
You got me. I guess maybe since there's not entire chapters of the HP books devoted to the knitting of magic robes and wooly hats, it didn't need to be approved?
Honestly, what I'd like to see a game company try (to see if it works) is to have a dual leveling system. Have one set of levels for combat and one set for professions. So, you could have a character who is a 14th level dwarf warrior but he's also a 32nd level armorsmith.
As for making a game world more dynamic... I don't know... I've had some ideas on that, but I'm not sure if they're easily workable in a MMORPG setting. (What I mean is the coding could be a real bitch to do.)
Possibly. Or the judge could not be fond of ex parte discovery.
See, that, to me, is a sham (ex parte discovery). The RIAA doesn't know who specifically is infringing on their IP. Hence the John Doe lawsuits and the motions for ex parte discovery. But then the students who are the targets of these lawsuits don't know what may be used against them in court and help prepare their own defense because if they show up to the discovery proceedings, it actually strengthens the RIAA's case because now the RIAA knows who they are.
But what the hell do I know... most of the law I know is from Law & Order and serving on jury duty. (Okay, and printing out a lot of legal documents over the last seven years.)
The thing is, most, if not all MMORPGs out there are that static for a reason. It allows everyone the chance to do that quest, get that special item, whatever.
I don't know if you've ever logged onto a new WoW server the day it goes online, but people race to be the first to level 20, level 30, and so on. They want to be the first on that server to down Ragnaros (well, okay, honestly, I'm not sure they even bother with that any more...), or the first player in the Outlands, or whatever goal they set for themselves. And that's why WoW is that static. Do you want to lose out on ever even starting a huge quest because some guy who lives in his mom's basement and stayed up for 48 hours straight beat you (and everyone else) to all the goals in the game? I think you'd rightfully be a little pissed that you're paying the same fee as everyone else, but because someone beat you to Quest X, no one else can ever do it.
And yes, WoW doesn't allow the whole "level 1 with max profession skill", but I honestly can't think of a game that does allow it. Did EQ? Perhaps they did (it's been years since I played), but I remember that they made it cost so much to raise any profession that it wasn't worth trying to do it as a level 1 unless you had a couple sugar daddies supporting you. DAOC might have let you, but it was so much more cost effective to go out and level and melt down the loot you got to save costs.
Did the publishers of those books make a deal with the publishers of the Harry Potter books? Unless we're talking about those "fanfic" Chinese HP books, I'll bet they did.
And there's the crux of the matter. If the publishers/creators/whatever of this lexicon had sat down and hammered out a deal with the HP publishers, there wouldn't be a court case. But it looks like they're trying to do an end run around those publishers, possibly in order to keep all the potential cash for themselves.
Which is damned foolish, considering the amount of money they're going to have spend on lawyers.
Why do companies do shit like this?
Any possible praise (ha ha) a manager would get from corporate higher-ups for following this policy is going to be more then offset by all the bad press and lost sales because of any customers who are turned away by hearing of this story. It takes a lot of effort to get new loyal customers, much less effort to retain loyal customers, but it's exceptionally easy to piss them off to the point where they won't come back.
Prince's issues were with Warner Brothers. BMI published only two of his albums (his second album, self-titled, and Dirty Minds).
When are they going to apologize for faking disaster relief?
But, technically, it is a punishment.
"Hey, we can't find every single person in Canada who is pirating music, eh? So what we're going to do, you hosers, is charge extra for all the legal downloads. And we're going to charge for every single one of them back to 1996, eh?"
See, the punishment isn't so much the extra tax on all future purchases. Okay, if you add a new tax, people can decide whether or not they want to continue purchasing the same item with that new tax added on. But when you make it retroactive back over a decade, that is a punishment. The purchasers can't decide to un-buy something they bought a decade ago, or five years ago.
Check me if I'm wrong, but with your example of Radiohead, aren't they going to a "pay whatever you want" price format for their latest album as a download? Why yes, they are. Yeah, they're also offering a high(er)-priced "with all the extras" version if you want a physical copy. But they're hardly asking for extortionate prices.
Oh noes! Someone wrote something mean about my company on the internet! I gots to sue them!
Please, God (or other available deity), strike these litigious dumbasses with your holy fire/hammer/lightning from the sky (as appropriate).
Well, damn. Glad I'm switching to RoadRunner. Not exactly voluntarily, but if AT&T is pulling this kind of shit, who knows what they'll try next.
Okay, look at it... the remake of Battlestar Gallactica has been good. Solid rating, decent storyline. Okay, the writers love "All Along the Watchtower", but hey...
Before BSG (again, the remake) came out, name another remake of an old series where the remake was worth a damn? And no, Star Trek: The Next Generation doesn't count. That wasn't a remake. (Okay, they did rehash some original series episodes....) And speaking of the original series... I remember watching reruns of it as a kid. I thought it was awesome. Then, years after my childhood years, TNG came out. I thought it was awesome. But when I went back to watch some old original series episodes, man... they sucked. And yeah, part of it is that I got older and more discriminating in my tastes, and that even the crappy special effects in season 1 of TNG beat the best special effects in the original series.
Honestly, though... look at Knight Rider without the lens of childhood awe. The show was not that good. It wasn't bad, by any means, but it wasn't good. What's next? A remake of "Barney Miller"? "Hill Street Blues"?
And what was "Bionic Woman" up against in that time slot anyway?
The one time I'm without mod points....
Their commercials would be:
"Are you a moron? Did you buy a computer and then say 'Now what?' Have you been known to sit in front of the monitor, drool and say 'nuuuuurrrrrr'? Then we have just the material for you! We will happily sell you DVDs of basic knowledge that you could get from any 12-year old with a functioning brain stem, but we charge you an arm and a leg for it! Come on, you obviously bought a computer for no freaking reason, so we're hoping you're just as clueless to buy our software!
Act now and we'll keep siphoning money from your bank account in easy monthly payments of $24.95!"
I swear to God, I'll pistol whip the next guy that says 'shenanigans!'
The thing is, you have no guarantee that the stock will go down. Yeah, you could sell 10,000 shares of COMPANY short, but if the stock goes up instead of down, you lose money.
The only way it would be fraud would be if you were the CEO (or some other company officer or had insider information) of COMPANY and used your position to easily manipulate the stock price.
And, I think even with all the bone-headed things that Darl McBride has done, we really can't say he's so stupid as to try and pull off this kind of stock manipulation with no expectation of getting caught. (I'm not saying he did. I'm saying if he did, he should reasonably expect to get caught at it.)
With enough ego left over for the SDF-1.
Can't help you. Too busy being amused by the words "sock puppet" in a Slashdot submission.
How about a logarithmic or semi-logarithmic population based voting method?
Say, if a country has 1 million or less citizens, then they get one vote. 10 million citizens = 2 votes, 100 million citizens = 3 votes, and so on.
So, China, with 1 billion+ people, would get four votes, but they could be "outvoted" by five small countries.
I actually liked Quark. Sure, he was a bit of a clown. But how many dishonest, conniving, backstabbing characters were actually main characters in a Star Trek series? (okay, he was really supporting cast, but he got a good bit of screen time.) You couldn't have a character like that (dishonest, out for himself, greedy, etc.) on TNG every week because eventually Worf would just toss him in the brig, or Riker would shoot him or something. But it worked on DS9 because Quark wasn't in Starfleet, and the worst thing that could really happen to Quark was him getting tossed in the clink by Odo. (Which Odo did on more then one occassion.)
Plus, Quark (and the Quark/Odo interactions) had some of the best lines of the series.
Actually, I think the abject fucking shittiness of Voyager was due to the new characters and concepts absolutely sucking in execution.
/.er who wanted to strangle the character....
Don't get me wrong, the concept was good. Hell, I'll go so far as to say the concept was great. But the results fell really fucking flat. Janeway was one of the most boring captains ever. I mean, let's face it... in TNG, there were probably more episodes that focused on Riker then Picard, but Picard was still interesting as a character. Janeway? Booooooring. Tom Paris? Booooooring. Chakotay? Okay, there was potential there, but it was lost. Harry Kim? Again, potential, but it was lost. Neelix? Tell me I'm not the only
But I watched most of Season 1 of Heroes on their official site. Here's hoping Season 2 continues that way.