That you agreed to something and then they installed their software based on your agreement?
Agreed to "something" is right. I have to wonder if most people reading the agreement would believe they agreed to the addition of the type of software Sony used. Based on the outrage expressed by many (even technically minded) users, this is not what they agreed to.
If the company isn't being up-front with the customer, IMO they do open themselves up to a lawsuit. Contrary to what many people seem to believe, the law doesn't look kindly on people being deceived or misled -especially in civil court. You can't sell someone a ham sandwich and not disclose the fact it contains dog poop, just because the menu says it "contains a special ingredient".
I guess I'm just a little disappointed that one has to read a mult-page leegal agreement for a $50 game. For an apartment, house, car, or other major puchase or investment, yes. I just don't want to think of a world where I have to read a legal agreement every time I make even a small purchase.
It is in section 13 (acknowledgments) of the Terms of Use (linked from the EULA). I never would have guessed it would be there of all places. Oh well. Guess that's why IANAL. And it also shows why people don't read theses things. It takes 30 minutes of reading to get there. Thank goodness board games don't come with EULAs like that. Can you imagine the agreement for just a deck of cards?
OK, finally found it, on the terms of use page under "Acknowledgements", which I didn't read becasue I didn't think that's what would be there.
13. Acknowledgments. You hereby acknowledge that:
A. WHEN RUNNING, THE WORLD OF WARCRAFT CLIENT MAY MONITOR YOUR COMPUTER'S RANDOM ACCESS MEMORY (RAM) AND/OR CPU PROCESSES FOR UNAUTHORIZED THIRD PARTY PROGRAMS RUNNING CONCURRENTLY WITH WORLD OF WARCRAFT. AN "UNAUTHORIZED THIRD PARTY PROGRAM" AS USED HEREIN SHALL BE DEFINED AS ANY THIRD PARTY SOFTWARE, INCLUDING WITHOUT LIMITATION ANY "ADDON" OR "MOD," THAT IN BLIZZARD ENTERTAINMENT'S SOLE DETERMINATION: (i) ENABLES OR FACILITATES CHEATING OF ANY TYPE; (ii) ALLOWS USERS TO MODIFY OR HACK THE WORLD OF WARCRAFT INTERFACE, ENVIRONMENT, AND/OR EXPERIENCE IN ANY WAY NOT EXPRESSLY AUTHORIZED BY BLIZZARD ENTERTAINMENT; OR (iii) INTERCEPTS, "MINES," OR OTHERWISE COLLECTS INFORMATION FROM OR THROUGH WORLD OF WARCRAFT. IN THE EVENT THAT WORLD OF WARCRAFT DETECTS AN UNAUTHORIZED THIRD PARTY PROGRAM, BLIZZARD MAY (a) COMMUNICATE INFORMATION BACK TO BLIZZARD ENTERTAINMENT, INCLUDING WITHOUT LIMITATION YOUR ACCOUNT NAME, DETAILS ABOUT THE UNAUTHORIZED THIRD PARTY PROGRAM DETECTED, AND THE TIME AND DATE THE UNAUTHORIZED THIRD PARTY PROGRAM WAS DETECTED; AND/OR (b) EXERCISE ANY OR ALL OF ITS RIGHTS UNDER SECTION 6 OF THIS AGREEMENT, WITH OR WITHOUT PRIOR NOTICE TO THE USER.
You really do need to sit down for 30-60 minutes and carefully read through these things.
OK, you read the licensing agreement and tell me where it says they are monitoring your system for cheats. The closest is maybe from the linked Terms of Use where it says
6. Consequences of Violating the Blizzard Entertainment Code of Conduct.
Blizzard Entertainment may, in its sole and absolute discretion, take whatever action it deems necessary to preserve the integrity of World of Warcraft.
Other than that, and their statements about automatically upgrading the game, I'm at a loss. AFAICT they never state that their software is doing any of the things mentioned in the article.
Obscuring what? From what I'm reading from other posters this is part of the EULA. What's the problem?
Take a look here. Can you show me where it describes anything resembling what they're doing? I read through the headings of the Terms of Use also, and saw nothing directly relavent. The closest is
7. Patches and Updates. Licensor may deploy or provide patches, updates and modifications to the Game that must be installed for the user to continue to play the Game. Licensor may update the Game remotely, including, without limitation, the Game Client residing on the user's machine, without knowledge or consent of the user, and you hereby grant to Licensor your consent to deploy and apply such patches, updates and modifications to the Game.
I see references to patching/upgrading the game, not gathering information to check for cheats. Anyone else see something more to the point? Otherwise I'll stick to my previous statement.
Didn't read the license agreement? Sorry, but that's not Blizzard's problem. It would be nice if Blizzard had made it more obvious that they would be doing this.
But you know what? Tough titties, you agreed to it.
And that's exactly how the majority of spyware out there gets installed. Is it OK for Blizzard, but not OK for a P2P or web utility company to do?
You don't like the software? It ain't all that hard to cancel you subscription and uninstall the software.
And that's the crux of the problem. The EFF's point is that the software is snuck in under the radar -the user is prevented from making that choice. All that's needed is for Blizzard to be up-front with what they're doing. Let the user decide.
I kind of see that point. OTOH isn't the lawsuit about IBM supposedly making this proprietary (secret) knowledge, public? If its in Linux souce code, its already public information. Thus there's no reason for SCO to keep it sealed. Are they trying to say that the knowledge of what code isn't supposed to be there is a secret?
For TV shows, I can see it. For videos I would usually buy on DVD? Not with that video quality. As mentioned on arstechnica.com, Apple could possibly make a bundle with some of the older TV shows. I'm sure just about everyone can think of a series or two that's no longer airing and not available on DVD that they'd love to see once again.
Sounds like it. He seems to want the equivalent of charging long distance charges to both parties when you place a long distance call -only on internet traffic.
I really don't know that there is a "correct" way of adding up RAM use. That's my biggest gripe with the article. Is RAM use reported by a utlity any kind of measure for bloat, or how good/bad the software really is?
I want Google to work on returning better search results instead of more.
For some reason, the current method of measuring how good a search engine is, is how many pages it returns, not the quality of the pages returned. It used to be I could find what I was looking for in the first page of hits. That day is long gone.
Before you go off accusing Microsoft of a Consent Degree violation, perhaps you should be a bit more careful about what exactly you're comparing.
I'm doing nothing of the sort. What I'm saying is that Office app may rightly use the APIs that are part of the OS, and that this code should be counted towards its memory footprint. OpenOffice, wanting to be an open source, operating system agnostic application will avoid using those same APIs. As a result, they have to write and load their own code to do things the OS may normally do.
And since you didn't cite the source for your "7.10" and "9.81" numbers above, I doubt you really understand what you're measuring.
You're right, I didn't. But I did immediately (within a minute) follow with a post that the numbers for all the Windows software (MS and Open office) were from the article.
So basically, my point is the same as yours. What exactly is being measured by these RAM metrics? Are they any real kind of metric on bloat?
I was wondering how much of the RAM footprint difference was due to Office relying on Windows code. So just for the fun of it I fired up Excel on my Mac. 22.94 MB of real memory being used for Excel, 34.14 for Word. Compare that with 7.10 and 9.81 for Excel and Word on Windows and 37.54 and 37.66 for Calc and Write on Windows. Anyone running OpenOffice on a Mac want to add another data point where MS doesn't have code "hidden" in the OS?
I'm not only wondering about the GUI, but the OS in general. How much of the code that Office apps use is preloaded as part of the OS? This not only effects how much RAM an application appears to use, it can also be a determining factor is speed benchmarks.
I read that as a, "yeah, we made it so you can view it on the iPod if you really want to," not as having any real use other than verifying which images are on the iPod.
Slashdot Mirror
That you agreed to something and then they installed their software based on your agreement?
Agreed to "something" is right. I have to wonder if most people reading the agreement would believe they agreed to the addition of the type of software Sony used. Based on the outrage expressed by many (even technically minded) users, this is not what they agreed to.
If the company isn't being up-front with the customer, IMO they do open themselves up to a lawsuit. Contrary to what many people seem to believe, the law doesn't look kindly on people being deceived or misled -especially in civil court. You can't sell someone a ham sandwich and not disclose the fact it contains dog poop, just because the menu says it "contains a special ingredient".
I guess I'm just a little disappointed that one has to read a mult-page leegal agreement for a $50 game. For an apartment, house, car, or other major puchase or investment, yes. I just don't want to think of a world where I have to read a legal agreement every time I make even a small purchase.
It is in section 13 (acknowledgments) of the Terms of Use (linked from the EULA). I never would have guessed it would be there of all places. Oh well. Guess that's why IANAL. And it also shows why people don't read theses things. It takes 30 minutes of reading to get there. Thank goodness board games don't come with EULAs like that. Can you imagine the agreement for just a deck of cards?
OK, finally found it, on the terms of use page under "Acknowledgements", which I didn't read becasue I didn't think that's what would be there.
13. Acknowledgments.
You hereby acknowledge that:
A. WHEN RUNNING, THE WORLD OF WARCRAFT CLIENT MAY MONITOR YOUR COMPUTER'S RANDOM ACCESS MEMORY (RAM) AND/OR CPU PROCESSES FOR UNAUTHORIZED THIRD PARTY PROGRAMS RUNNING CONCURRENTLY WITH WORLD OF WARCRAFT. AN "UNAUTHORIZED THIRD PARTY PROGRAM" AS USED HEREIN SHALL BE DEFINED AS ANY THIRD PARTY SOFTWARE, INCLUDING WITHOUT LIMITATION ANY "ADDON" OR "MOD," THAT IN BLIZZARD ENTERTAINMENT'S SOLE DETERMINATION: (i) ENABLES OR FACILITATES CHEATING OF ANY TYPE; (ii) ALLOWS USERS TO MODIFY OR HACK THE WORLD OF WARCRAFT INTERFACE, ENVIRONMENT, AND/OR EXPERIENCE IN ANY WAY NOT EXPRESSLY AUTHORIZED BY BLIZZARD ENTERTAINMENT; OR (iii) INTERCEPTS, "MINES," OR OTHERWISE COLLECTS INFORMATION FROM OR THROUGH WORLD OF WARCRAFT. IN THE EVENT THAT WORLD OF WARCRAFT DETECTS AN UNAUTHORIZED THIRD PARTY PROGRAM, BLIZZARD MAY (a) COMMUNICATE INFORMATION BACK TO BLIZZARD ENTERTAINMENT, INCLUDING WITHOUT LIMITATION YOUR ACCOUNT NAME, DETAILS ABOUT THE UNAUTHORIZED THIRD PARTY PROGRAM DETECTED, AND THE TIME AND DATE THE UNAUTHORIZED THIRD PARTY PROGRAM WAS DETECTED; AND/OR (b) EXERCISE ANY OR ALL OF ITS RIGHTS UNDER SECTION 6 OF THIS AGREEMENT, WITH OR WITHOUT PRIOR NOTICE TO THE USER.
You really do need to sit down for 30-60 minutes and carefully read through these things.
OK, you read the licensing agreement and tell me where it says they are monitoring your system for cheats. The closest is maybe from the linked Terms of Use where it says
6. Consequences of Violating the Blizzard Entertainment Code of Conduct.
Blizzard Entertainment may, in its sole and absolute discretion, take whatever action it deems necessary to preserve the integrity of World of Warcraft.
Other than that, and their statements about automatically upgrading the game, I'm at a loss. AFAICT they never state that their software is doing any of the things mentioned in the article.
Obscuring what? From what I'm reading from other posters this is part of the EULA. What's the problem?
Take a look here. Can you show me where it describes anything resembling what they're doing? I read through the headings of the Terms of Use also, and saw nothing directly relavent. The closest is
7. Patches and Updates. Licensor may deploy or provide patches, updates and modifications to the Game that must be installed for the user to continue to play the Game. Licensor may update the Game remotely, including, without limitation, the Game Client residing on the user's machine, without knowledge or consent of the user, and you hereby grant to Licensor your consent to deploy and apply such patches, updates and modifications to the Game.
I see references to patching/upgrading the game, not gathering information to check for cheats. Anyone else see something more to the point? Otherwise I'll stick to my previous statement.
If this you feel this criteria is too invasive then, by all means, do not use their software/services.
And how does one get to this "feeling" if Blizzard is obscuring what they're doing?
you have the right to choose not to work for an employeer that does drug testing,
And if the company does the testing without your knowledge?
Didn't read the license agreement? Sorry, but that's not Blizzard's problem. It would be nice if Blizzard had made it more obvious that they would be doing this.
But you know what? Tough titties, you agreed to it.
And that's exactly how the majority of spyware out there gets installed. Is it OK for Blizzard, but not OK for a P2P or web utility company to do?
You don't like the software? It ain't all that hard to cancel you subscription and uninstall the software.
And that's the crux of the problem. The EFF's point is that the software is snuck in under the radar -the user is prevented from making that choice. All that's needed is for Blizzard to be up-front with what they're doing. Let the user decide.
That's what I keep telling my kids!
But they keep modding me -1 Redundant (or worse).
I kind of see that point. OTOH isn't the lawsuit about IBM supposedly making this proprietary (secret) knowledge, public? If its in Linux souce code, its already public information. Thus there's no reason for SCO to keep it sealed. Are they trying to say that the knowledge of what code isn't supposed to be there is a secret?
I just don't get it.
For TV shows, I can see it. For videos I would usually buy on DVD? Not with that video quality. As mentioned on arstechnica.com, Apple could possibly make a bundle with some of the older TV shows. I'm sure just about everyone can think of a series or two that's no longer airing and not available on DVD that they'd love to see once again.
Sounds like it. He seems to want the equivalent of charging long distance charges to both parties when you place a long distance call -only on internet traffic.
So you're saying they're no longer spineless invertebrates?
We will have more in the next 10 years than we have had on the last 30
So expect another major MS OS upgrade in the next decade!
Yeah, I think its hilarious that suddenly MS is all about Search.
I really don't know that there is a "correct" way of adding up RAM use. That's my biggest gripe with the article. Is RAM use reported by a utlity any kind of measure for bloat, or how good/bad the software really is?
I want Google to work on returning better search results instead of more.
For some reason, the current method of measuring how good a search engine is, is how many pages it returns, not the quality of the pages returned. It used to be I could find what I was looking for in the first page of hits. That day is long gone.
If Bill Gates has enough money to create a real vampire then why doesn't he have enough money to make Windows stable?
Considering the role he's played in creating zombie armies, I don't think becoming a blood-sucking creature of the night is too far off.
OTOH, a stable Windows? You think he has supernatural abilities or something?
Before you go off accusing Microsoft of a Consent Degree violation, perhaps you should be a bit more careful about what exactly you're comparing.
I'm doing nothing of the sort. What I'm saying is that Office app may rightly use the APIs that are part of the OS, and that this code should be counted towards its memory footprint. OpenOffice, wanting to be an open source, operating system agnostic application will avoid using those same APIs. As a result, they have to write and load their own code to do things the OS may normally do.
And since you didn't cite the source for your "7.10" and "9.81" numbers above, I doubt you really understand what you're measuring.
You're right, I didn't. But I did immediately (within a minute) follow with a post that the numbers for all the Windows software (MS and Open office) were from the article.
So basically, my point is the same as yours. What exactly is being measured by these RAM metrics? Are they any real kind of metric on bloat?
I would be interested to see the memory comparison of MSO to iWork
Just fired up Pages (the iWork word processor). It runs at 18.31 MB an the same system I used fo the Mac Word and Excel measurements.
Just to clarify, the numbers for Office on the Mac are from my machine (OS X, Word X for Mac, Exel X for Mac). The Windows numbers are all from TFA.
I was wondering how much of the RAM footprint difference was due to Office relying on Windows code. So just for the fun of it I fired up Excel on my Mac. 22.94 MB of real memory being used for Excel, 34.14 for Word. Compare that with 7.10 and 9.81 for Excel and Word on Windows and 37.54 and 37.66 for Calc and Write on Windows. Anyone running OpenOffice on a Mac want to add another data point where MS doesn't have code "hidden" in the OS?
I'm not only wondering about the GUI, but the OS in general. How much of the code that Office apps use is preloaded as part of the OS? This not only effects how much RAM an application appears to use, it can also be a determining factor is speed benchmarks.
I read that as a, "yeah, we made it so you can view it on the iPod if you really want to," not as having any real use other than verifying which images are on the iPod.