It's hardly as simple as you would make it out to be, sir.
Ever burn a mix CD for your SO?
PIRATE!
Ever record something off of internet radio or FM?
PIRATE!
Ever time shift a TV program and bypass the commercials?
PIRATE!
I could go on, but I think you get the point.
It's easy to slap on a label and criminalize some basically innocuous behavior to the benefit of those that already have all the benefits (you did know that corporations enjoy more rights and protections than you, Mr. John Q. Public, right?).
"Er no. Your account isn't linked to the retail copy it's linked to your credit card"
BZZZZT!
Hardly. You can buy the game with cash, and then there are those pesky monthly game cards that you can purchase the same way, guaranteeing your anonymity.
They're going to get a catchy name like "analog hole" pretty soon too.
BTW, WoW expansion pack fans should take note of this link
"We are the only remaining superpower. We have a huge responsibility to set an example for the rest of the world and to help mature all of our societies."
And we've been doing a bang up job of it too, don't you think?
As a nation we've:
Gone to war in third world countries to bolster corporate interests
Lied to our citizens (WMDs anyone?)
Enabled puppet dictators to acheive or maintain positions of power (Noriega, Saddam, the Shah to name some [see above for our remedy when they decide to act on their own impulses])
Equipped terrorists as tools in our undeclared wars (Remember Osama?)
Ignored acts of genocide and brutality when it suited us (Rwanda, Somalia, Bosnia, and others)
Improperly, if not illegally, disposed of myriad toxic chemical and biological substances worldwide (though we are hardly alone in this)
Stonewalled on issues of global importance (Kyoto comes to mind)
I could go on, but it's depressing and demoralizing. Especially in light of the fact that I've voted consistently for administrations that say they are against policies and decisions like those above, and they either don't win the election, or come to power and continue in the status quo.
I know I didn't, but am wondering if they didn't have the standard CYA disclaimer, the one where the announcer intones in a sonorous voice "The following program deals with adult subject matter, viewers with young children are strongly cautioned..." , or whatever the hell that rap is.
Barring that, there is something called the remote.
Barring *that* there is something called the OFF switch.
The McNeil-Lehrer News Hour tonight pointed out that the majority of the complaints tendered to the FCC, which resulted in actions or fines, were from "organized groups".
[rant] So what this really boils down to is the current administration pandering to their base in advance of the November mid-term elections, and I for one find it reprehensible that morality nazis bonded at the anus to politicians seeking re-election are rewriting the core values that this country was built on. [/rant]
*titled* "Philadelphia Inquirer | 03/05/2006 | tech.life@play | Time-savers or spoilsports?", even though it's bannered as "Kansas.com - The Wichita Eagle - 'the same article name'"?
I know that this is simpy another aspect of media conglomeration, as the parent company of both the Philly Inquirer and Wichita Eagle is Knight Ridder. But it does speak to a lack of diligence on their part not to keep on top of minutia.
And minutia is what this is all about, the minutia of WoW, tedious as it may be.
Having only recently become involved in WoW I can sympathize with Dennis McCauley. I too am getting sick of killing inoffensive creatures to advance in skill and accrue cash. There seems to be all too much of that taking up my time. So much so in the first 20 days that I am already at risk of getting bored and bagging the whole thing, despite a $50 initial up front investment and the purchase of a game card.
So then, to the question "Is it cheating?", buying online gold with RL cash?
I'd have to say, no. Someone just found a market and filled a need, and as long as they do it forthrightly, without stealing from their customers, no one else should care.
But some will always care. More than likely those who are not so well off, who look down their noses at "trust fund babys", or those of "Old Money" who denigrate the "noveau riche", or those already overly invested in the old (only by gameplay) way of accrual. All of which are pretty discriminatory and arbitrary ways of looking at things.
I don't really care how you came about your level 60 armor, as long as I'm in the same war party. Can we go kill some demons now?
The sad thing is that all the MPAA has to do is look over at the Universal Vivendi property, Blizzard Entertainment.
Having passed 3.5 million subscribers over six months ago, conservative estimates of their monthly revenue on the World of Warcraft franchise exceed $41,965,000.00. That translates to over half a billion annually, with long term foreseeable growth.
Why?
Blizzard delivers the game via a streaming model, has absolute control of the content, owns the servers delivering the goods, and can continue adding content to keep it's subscribers coming back as long as it's profitable to do so.
Movie studios could do the same by offering a tiered system of streaming content at increasing resolutions on a subscription basis, i.e. 5 movies monthly/annually @ 640x480 = $X / 5 movies monthly/annually @ 800x600 = $XX / 5 movies monthly/annually @ 1024x768 = $XXX. Increase the frequency, pay more. While a simple concept, the watermarking/security technology to ensure there's no redistribution would hardly be trivial.
This then cuts "piracy" off at the knees, and gives studios control of their content again, without the overhead of egregious legal fees or bad PR. Everybody wins.
But, for this model to be profitable it would mean that studios would have to concentrate on putting out quality instead of quantity, and give up using Fx to coverup nonexistent storylines, and that's a topic for another thread entirely.
Now back to our regularly scheduled programming....
scene of corporate greed out of control>
[fade into smoke filled board room]
[sniveling lackey wrings hands while sidling up to throne at head of table]
"Lord Ivan, I know the path to swelling our company coffers beyond the ken of mortal men!"
"SPEAK LACKEY! If you value your tongue!"
"First we will cut labor costs by inducing thousands of middle managers to leave the company with separation packages that will leave them subject to long term unemployment!"
"Yessss...."
"Then we will do away with the pensions of those that remain!"
"Ahhhhh...."
"Finally we will charge the 'freeloaders', like Google and Yahoo, for using the networks that you, in your wisdom, bade thy serfs build!"
"HA! Bwah-ha-ha-ha! I like it! Ready the accountants! Let loose the dogs of war!"
[fade out of boardroom]/scene of corporate greed out of control>
With many news orginazations hemorrhaging cash and suffering cut backs, the monkey-headed managers will look to any source for a new income stream, and what could be better than a new company with an incredible capitalization as a target?
They want Google to get out their wallet and write them a fat cheque.
and our caller has decided to tune in and Ask Slashdot, "What program combinations, or websites do you use to uproot that last bit of unwanted software intrusion?"
You've already heard the usual drills: Change your browser/OS, hack, hack, hack and patch, patch, patch (followed by the obligatory reboot, reboot, reboot).
How an entirely different approach?
Don't connect to the web, in fact, don't network at all.
Whoa! Novel concept, eh?
Combine it with this: Buy two new (or gently used) PC CPUs. They're cheap enough nowadays. Now, configure one with all the patches, hacks, tweaks, programs you need, etc., etc., etc..
When you're through, and satified with the result, clone the drive to the other PC (how you choose to go about that is up to you, but a good starting point can be found here).
Now you'll have a "reference box" that will serve as a back up to the one accessing the web. This will allow you to continue to be productive, despite the inevitablity of you/your kids/your S.O. downloading and installing the crapware of the week which partnered with a data harvesting company, or clicking the wrong hyperlink in Internet Exploder thereby hosing your desktop with pr0n links.
In anticipation of your next question, "How can I move data when the PCs aren't networked?", please tune in tomorrow when Ask Slashdot answers the question "What's sneaker net?".
We now return you to your regularly scheduled programming.
Wow, three Mac/Apple stories in a row today
on
New iMac disassembled
·
· Score: -1, Offtopic
Does that set any kind of/. record?
Not that I'm complaining, after all Apple is worth more than Dell (in more ways than one) at this point.
"The end-of-year vulnerability score should be taken with a grain of salt, however, since US-CERT doesn't filter out updates (so one actual vulnerability can be counted numerous times) nor does it break out individual vulnerabilities from warnings that cover multiple bugs (as in the many Mac OS X vulnerability listings)."
Ya gotta love CYA jargon and short disclaimers, the white wash for troll reporting.
As all this will do is enable the religious right to galvanize their base against "radical judges legislating from the bench", as much a non-issue as gay marriage was in 2004, and this despite the Judge Jones declaration "that he wasn't saying the intelligent design concept shouldn't be studied and discussed, saying its advocates "have bona fide and deeply held beliefs which drive their scholarly endeavors."".
We live in the strangest of times, where intangibles matter more than observable facts and spin supplants truth as a means to grasp and maintain power.
Having been a fan of the edgy, stream-of-consciousness, animated predecessor and convinced that Charlize Theron would not lend her talents to anything *bad*, I went to see it with high hopes that it would not be...well...what it was.
What was it?
A bad Hollywood retelling that took key characters from the original and dropped them into a mutant hash of a plot (read:dumbed-down-for-mass-market back story with lots of thud, blunder, and CGI, because we're afraid anything else will shoot way over the heads of our target audience) that succeeds in convincing me of one thing:
Suits concerned only with box office revenue, marketing tie-ins and DVD after sales should not be allowed near animated/comic properties for the purposes of making a live action movie.
for the sound of that resounding *SMACK* as the gates of Sony/BMG hit the collective arses of the executive brain trust responsible for green lighting this reprehensible action in the first place.
"The word you've entered isn't in the dictionary. Click on a spelling suggestion below or try again..."Webster.com
Regardless of the spelling inadequecies of the title, this list is interesting, though I'd found quite a while back that repetitively stabbing 0 seemed to be the panic sequence/secret-code-for-this-is-a-truly-p-o'd-cus tomer for multiple companies.
Slashdot Mirror
Your sig should be emblazoned on a tee shirt, mind if I do that for you?
It's hardly as simple as you would make it out to be, sir.
Ever burn a mix CD for your SO?
PIRATE!
Ever record something off of internet radio or FM?
PIRATE!
Ever time shift a TV program and bypass the commercials?
PIRATE!
I could go on, but I think you get the point.
It's easy to slap on a label and criminalize some basically innocuous behavior to the benefit of those that already have all the benefits (you did know that corporations enjoy more rights and protections than you, Mr. John Q. Public, right?).
passed in 2004. PK doesn't have anything on the new bill.
"Er no. Your account isn't linked to the retail copy it's linked to your credit card"
BZZZZT!
Hardly. You can buy the game with cash, and then there are those pesky monthly game cards that you can purchase the same way, guaranteeing your anonymity.
They're going to get a catchy name like "analog hole" pretty soon too.
BTW, WoW expansion pack fans should take note of this link
And we've been doing a bang up job of it too, don't you think?
As a nation we've:
I could go on, but it's depressing and demoralizing. Especially in light of the fact that I've voted consistently for administrations that say they are against policies and decisions like those above, and they either don't win the election, or come to power and continue in the status quo.
Soon we'll be swimming in kittens, kitsch, and lace as the tie ins to unutterably *cute* sites come, due to the /. site redesign.
ooooooo...*HOW I DESPISE YOU MINDLESS MARKETING DROIDS*!
Tell me this is a terrorist defacement!
I know I didn't, but am wondering if they didn't have the standard CYA disclaimer, the one where the announcer intones in a sonorous voice "The following program deals with adult subject matter, viewers with young children are strongly cautioned..." , or whatever the hell that rap is.
Barring that, there is something called the remote.
Barring *that* there is something called the OFF switch.
The McNeil-Lehrer News Hour tonight pointed out that the majority of the complaints tendered to the FCC, which resulted in actions or fines, were from "organized groups".
[rant]
So what this really boils down to is the current administration pandering to their base in advance of the November mid-term elections, and I for one find it reprehensible that morality nazis bonded at the anus to politicians seeking re-election are rewriting the core values that this country was built on.
[/rant]
Though my comments were made in regard to the movie industry, I'm so pleased that *someone* is making this move.
Now, how soon before the Disney library will be available for the iPod?
*titled* "Philadelphia Inquirer | 03/05/2006 | tech.life@play | Time-savers or spoilsports?", even though it's bannered as "Kansas.com - The Wichita Eagle - 'the same article name'"?
I know that this is simpy another aspect of media conglomeration, as the parent company of both the Philly Inquirer and Wichita Eagle is Knight Ridder. But it does speak to a lack of diligence on their part not to keep on top of minutia.
And minutia is what this is all about, the minutia of WoW, tedious as it may be.
Having only recently become involved in WoW I can sympathize with Dennis McCauley. I too am getting sick of killing inoffensive creatures to advance in skill and accrue cash. There seems to be all too much of that taking up my time. So much so in the first 20 days that I am already at risk of getting bored and bagging the whole thing, despite a $50 initial up front investment and the purchase of a game card.
So then, to the question "Is it cheating?", buying online gold with RL cash?
I'd have to say, no. Someone just found a market and filled a need, and as long as they do it forthrightly, without stealing from their customers, no one else should care.
But some will always care. More than likely those who are not so well off, who look down their noses at "trust fund babys", or those of "Old Money" who denigrate the "noveau riche", or those already overly invested in the old (only by gameplay) way of accrual. All of which are pretty discriminatory and arbitrary ways of looking at things.
I don't really care how you came about your level 60 armor, as long as I'm in the same war party. Can we go kill some demons now?
Having passed 3.5 million subscribers over six months ago, conservative estimates of their monthly revenue on the World of Warcraft franchise exceed $41,965,000.00. That translates to over half a billion annually, with long term foreseeable growth.
Why?
Blizzard delivers the game via a streaming model, has absolute control of the content, owns the servers delivering the goods, and can continue adding content to keep it's subscribers coming back as long as it's profitable to do so.
Movie studios could do the same by offering a tiered system of streaming content at increasing resolutions on a subscription basis, i.e. 5 movies monthly/annually @ 640x480 = $X / 5 movies monthly/annually @ 800x600 = $XX / 5 movies monthly/annually @ 1024x768 = $XXX. Increase the frequency, pay more. While a simple concept, the watermarking/security technology to ensure there's no redistribution would hardly be trivial.
This then cuts "piracy" off at the knees, and gives studios control of their content again, without the overhead of egregious legal fees or bad PR. Everybody wins.
But, for this model to be profitable it would mean that studios would have to concentrate on putting out quality instead of quantity, and give up using Fx to coverup nonexistent storylines, and that's a topic for another thread entirely.
Now back to our regularly scheduled programming....
scene of corporate greed out of control> [fade into smoke filled board room] [sniveling lackey wrings hands while sidling up to throne at head of table] "Lord Ivan, I know the path to swelling our company coffers beyond the ken of mortal men!" "SPEAK LACKEY! If you value your tongue!" "First we will cut labor costs by inducing thousands of middle managers to leave the company with separation packages that will leave them subject to long term unemployment!" "Yessss...." "Then we will do away with the pensions of those that remain!" "Ahhhhh...." "Finally we will charge the 'freeloaders', like Google and Yahoo, for using the networks that you, in your wisdom, bade thy serfs build!" "HA! Bwah-ha-ha-ha! I like it! Ready the accountants! Let loose the dogs of war!" [fade out of boardroom] /scene of corporate greed out of control>
The choice of weapon caliber that you use on it is optional.
Best of all it's totally "old skool".
It's about money.
With many news orginazations hemorrhaging cash and suffering cut backs, the monkey-headed managers will look to any source for a new income stream, and what could be better than a new company with an incredible capitalization as a target?
They want Google to get out their wallet and write them a fat cheque.
Show's over, nothing to see.
and our caller has decided to tune in and Ask Slashdot, "What program combinations, or websites do you use to uproot that last bit of unwanted software intrusion?"
You've already heard the usual drills: Change your browser/OS, hack, hack, hack and patch, patch, patch (followed by the obligatory reboot, reboot, reboot).
How an entirely different approach?
Don't connect to the web, in fact, don't network at all.
Whoa! Novel concept, eh?
Combine it with this: Buy two new (or gently used) PC CPUs. They're cheap enough nowadays. Now, configure one with all the patches, hacks, tweaks, programs you need, etc., etc., etc..
When you're through, and satified with the result, clone the drive to the other PC (how you choose to go about that is up to you, but a good starting point can be found here).
Now you'll have a "reference box" that will serve as a back up to the one accessing the web. This will allow you to continue to be productive, despite the inevitablity of you/your kids/your S.O. downloading and installing the crapware of the week which partnered with a data harvesting company, or clicking the wrong hyperlink in Internet Exploder thereby hosing your desktop with pr0n links.
In anticipation of your next question, "How can I move data when the PCs aren't networked?", please tune in tomorrow when Ask Slashdot answers the question "What's sneaker net?".
We now return you to your regularly scheduled programming.
Does that set any kind of /. record?
Not that I'm complaining, after all Apple is worth more than Dell (in more ways than one) at this point.
about their employees, outside the highest levels of management, what makes you think they'd give a flip about their customers?
Infoweek:
"The end-of-year vulnerability score should be taken with a grain of salt, however, since US-CERT doesn't filter out updates (so one actual vulnerability can be counted numerous times) nor does it break out individual vulnerabilities from warnings that cover multiple bugs (as in the many Mac OS X vulnerability listings)."
Ya gotta love CYA jargon and short disclaimers, the white wash for troll reporting.
That ephemeral, rather than concrete, goods are now being touted as Americas most valuable possessions is nothing short of depressing.
A nations ability to manufacture real goods is the true measure of its vitality.
Which is why we should all consider learning Cantonese as a second language.
As all this will do is enable the religious right to galvanize their base against "radical judges legislating from the bench", as much a non-issue as gay marriage was in 2004, and this despite the Judge Jones declaration "that he wasn't saying the intelligent design concept shouldn't be studied and discussed, saying its advocates "have bona fide and deeply held beliefs which drive their scholarly endeavors."".
We live in the strangest of times, where intangibles matter more than observable facts and spin supplants truth as a means to grasp and maintain power.
Having been a fan of the edgy, stream-of-consciousness, animated predecessor and convinced that Charlize Theron would not lend her talents to anything *bad*, I went to see it with high hopes that it would not be...well...what it was.
What was it?
A bad Hollywood retelling that took key characters from the original and dropped them into a mutant hash of a plot (read:dumbed-down-for-mass-market back story with lots of thud, blunder, and CGI, because we're afraid anything else will shoot way over the heads of our target audience) that succeeds in convincing me of one thing:
Suits concerned only with box office revenue, marketing tie-ins and DVD after sales should not be allowed near animated/comic properties for the purposes of making a live action movie.
Leave that to those who can do it right
I like the idea of mileage based road taxing.
I was under the impression we already had that with the taxes levied on the sale/purchase of fuel.
So is this just double taxation, facilitated by technology?
for the sound of that resounding *SMACK* as the gates of Sony/BMG hit the collective arses of the executive brain trust responsible for green lighting this reprehensible action in the first place.
Unfortunately the usual suspects are busy defending them.
"The word you've entered isn't in the dictionary. Click on a spelling suggestion below or try again..."Webster.com
s tomer for multiple companies.
Regardless of the spelling inadequecies of the title, this list is interesting, though I'd found quite a while back that repetitively stabbing 0 seemed to be the panic sequence/secret-code-for-this-is-a-truly-p-o'd-cu
And we've already been sold the "official party line"!
Now, where's my tinfoil hat?