You're both lame. Him for having to prove his dick size with a game and you for not just pointing and laughing.
It's just a single-player game, using it as bragging rights is pathetic. Like bragging about how often you win at solitaire.
There are many reasons for cheats, like simply wanting to play the game you bought in the manner you like. I don't show my high-scores to anyone, or bother looking at theirs, if I cheat in a game it's because this bit is boring and I want to move on.
Allow people to import a multi-player game for single-player play, but not to go the other way.
If you store characters locally they CAN be hacked. This is a proven fact. Encryption can't help here.
Even if no game-shark devices are available a moderately skilled embedded systems engineer can rig one from their job tools.
Even if you implement checks on single-player characters (disallowing 99th level for example) the cheaters just have to use more subtle cheats.
The problem with this is that the online service needs to store characters and then needs to bother with passwords to protect them. But there's no way around this. Any worthwhile online service either doesn't allow saved characters (Q3, Counterstrike) or stores them on the server.
If you really want details on this, I don't mind going into it in email.
Return the game and demand a refund. Anyone who makes a multiplayer game that accepts those sorts of commands from a client is defective. Even a game that lets a player specify the ammount of money they have is broken.
Go play a real game from a real company that attempts to patch these kind holes.
That would be true, except that EULA's aren't binding.
They'll claim the world, and if you buy it, they'll be willing to pretend it's legal. But it's not. Ignore EULAs and just follow actual laws like copyright and (ptui) the DMCA. (If you're unlucky enough to live in the USA.)
That's my take on it. I bought the game, I want to play the whole thing, on my schedule.
I appreciate that games like driving with no inherent structure offer an OPTION to race a championship, if you feel the need for bragging material or something. But I don't want to be forced to play like that.
And with MGS. I borrowed the PC version from a friend after I heard that it was the ultimate game ever, etc, etc. I played for about 45 minutes, died three times and had to restart from the exact same spot. Ugh. I decided that it wasn't worth it.
I've easily replayed a section twenty times in Q2 and RTCW but that's because it's a section *I* liked and wanted to do better at. Those annoying sections with a few hidden snipers and you in the open... those I saved every few shots and made it through quickly, because it wasn't something I enjoyed enough to spend time at. I really resent having a developer force me to play in the same way they play.
(If nothing else, do what Soldier of Fortune did. Have a "scoring" mode where your score is recorder and you have limited saves. Have another "fun" mode where the user is in charge, but it doesn't record a high score.)
Re:Stay away from Creative Products: full of bugs
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Testing the Audigy
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· Score: 2
Creative Labs is the ATI of sound cards.
Just the other day I wasted two hours trying to install a SB PCI128 on Win98 SE running on a P1-133 on an Asus p55t2p4. It's the most stable hardware and MS's best 9x OS (by far).
The drivers would literally reboot the computer while installing. When (after many attempts) we got them installed Windows would generate endless errors on boot and when rebooted would have disabled the card.
Eventually we gave up and went to the "Box of Stuff" and pulled out an old no-name ISA sound card. It came up, installed drivers for SB compatibility and was playing MP3s in no time, perfectly stable.
If nVidia makes a sound card I'll buy them instantly. I've *never* had driver issues with nVidia cards and I love their common driver architecture enabling me to install the card on any Windows computer with two files, one for 9x and one for NT/2k/XP.
My only complaint towards nVidia is that many OEMs use substandard RAMDACs (I think) which results in slightly fuzzy output at 1920x1440 or above. And that's not their fault, that's the fault of the company building the card. Asus is pretty good, the really cheap cards aren't great.
I still like reflex games because playing is the end in itself.
But RPGs force you to do the same thing over and over, not for the quest, but simply to level up so you can go on the quest.
Boring.
In a well-designed game you are given a quest and on your way to it you gain enough experience to complete it, and on that quest, gain the experience to complete the second, etc. Those are fun, or rather, as fun as the writing is good.
The ones that force you to wander around outside killing orcs for experience (or, like Zelda, pulling up bushes for gold coins) are the ones that suck.
It basically comes down to the ammount of filler vs content. I hate filler and will edit my character up enough for the next adventure, etc.
I'm quite into tactical combat though so I actually enjoyed old isomeric RPGs (like SSI's PoR and CotAB) when the battles were scripted. Yet another forest with orcs was dull.
IMHO games should come with cheat codes. Both everything cheats (god mode) and cheats that allow you to skip what you don't like... Maybe "fast walk" and "1000 gold" for Zelda and "win battle" in many RPGs. This way you could skip over the crap they use to be able to say "100+ hours of gameplay" and still do the bits you find fun.
A have friends who swear that cheating is wrong even in a single-player game. They're the nuts ones who admit they hate a part of the game, yet waste their weekend playing it, trying to get to the good stuff.
Maybe an RPG only gives me 10+ hours of gameplay, but if those are good hours, it's still a better value than a movie. And, better than 100+ hours of gameplay I hate.
So, if you went to Texas and were wrongly arrested for murder and sentenced to die, you wouldn't run, you'd choose to die with "dignity"?
He's not a national hero. Only the/. type crowd know who he is. A few liberal-leaning newspapers have articles about him, but they haven't reached the general public.
You watch too many movies. Bounty hunters are only barely legal in some countries. There's no way a bounty hunter could kidnap a Russian citizen from Russia and transport them to the US.
And there's no way Russia would extradite him for something they not only don't think is a crime, but have a law requiring. (There has to be a way to make backup copies of protected works.)
Maybe he wanted his bail money back, but I honestly didn't think he'd avoid prison. The US is pretty stupid when it comes to laws like this with vast corporate interest.
I doubt it. Why would he care about changing US law, especially US law that was plainly bought. Even more, there's a perfect example of how that law has been enforced by a crooked judge. (Kaplan worked for an MPAA member company and was involved in creating the drafts of the DMCA. How biased can you get?)
Skylarov probably cares a bit more about being free to continue his life with his family than he does in fighting US mega corps.
Does a mod-chip allow access to the access-controled BIOS?
No.
The only reason people point out that a console contains a BIOS is to justify EULAs. (Since by using the console you're using software which requires a copy to be made in RAM, etc, etc).
However, that too is bunk because US copyright law (and most other counties) allows a temporary copy of software to be made if it's required for the use of the software. (ie, copied into RAM.)
The fact that these copies are made as soon as the machine is powered on and without any user intervention you could say either that Sony authorized to copying, or that it's required ('cause the PS2 don't work otherwise) and thus legal.
EULAs also aren't binding because they don't follow the necessary standards for contracts.
I'll support Sony going after technologies that enable piracy when they take decent steps to help people who want to backup games.
Perhaps when Sony pays all retailers to replace broken media (bring in the piece with the Sony logo, or more than 60% of the disc, etc) and receive another copy for $1, kind of thing.
Until then, I don't support companies in taking away the rights of the honest customers even if they hurt more pirates.
IMHO piracy doesn't hurt companies much. I know 20+ people who have pirated Photoshop 6, they use to convert.BMPs to.JPGs and to crop pictures. I know four or five people who use it a lot and have made money (either a little, or the majority of their wage) by using it. They all own it. (Well, v5 or v6, I dunno.)
Those pirates wouldn't pay $20 to do what they use PS6 for, they're not going to buy it if they can't warez it.
I think the same is mostly true with games. Most gamers I know with a Q3 capable system have Q3 (warez) even if they don't really like it. But of all the people I know who play it at LAN parties (when the CD-Key isn't an issue) all but one owns it.
This "piracy is killing us" is a hoax. I'm sure they lose some potential sales, but not enough to break them.
The real crime here is in essentially taking away our legally protected rights to make backups, etc. Sony may not like NEO4, but why does that give them to right to deny people the ability to make backups?
As for backups, I don't know *anyone* who uses their original disks at a LAN party. Everyone either has a burn of the key disk or they've cracked the game so it doesn't require one. Nobody is willing to risk the original disk because they know there's no way the companies would replace them.
Re:The cost of leisure ...
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Sony vs Modchips
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· Score: 4, Informative
As you say, there's no such thing as a free lunch.
If you sell something to me for $10 you can't stop me from going and selling it to someone else for $15, even if that cuts into your intended business plan of selling it for $40.
If you want to sell it to people in rich countries, price it low enough that it's not worth them buying it in a poor country and shipping it over.
The whole concept of "veteran's discount" and such is that stores are giving this away to generate good will even though they know there's no law to specifically support it. A veteran could buy a product from a store for 20% off and sell it to someone for 10% off, pocketing the difference. Stores know this and don't make the discount too large and don't offer it on items that have a nearly 100% resale value.
It's a completely different topic for AMD to test a batch of chips and sell them at the speed they'll all perform at instead of testing each one individually. They're potentially selling more, for less. They're selling an nMhz chips and if yours works at n+100Mhz, you've got no reason to complain.
The only time this becomes objectionable would be if AMD sold a chip that could be overclocked and then tried to sue you for doing so. Luckily though, the hardware companies (with the exception of Rambus whose CEO is about a smart as a stick of warm butter) know that there's no basic in law for this.
Re:EULAs for console games are printed ON the box
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Sony vs Modchips
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· Score: 2
Wrong again.
A console is just the same as a car. Buy it, strip it, rebuild it. All legal.
The DMCA applies only to software, and even this it's a product of bribery and won't last.
As far as I understand it, he was released on bail for a while. Unless he was under 24h surveilance he could have easily made it to Mexico or Canada at which point he could have caught a plane to Russia.
I'm sure it's all very illegal to do that, but really, who cares? It's just a US court charging him with a US law, paid for by US corps.
Once he made it home to Russia I would imagine he'd be hard to extradite. He might never be able to travel to the US again, but that's not really a big drawback, especially for him... I doubt even if all charges were dropped tomorrow (with no conditions) that he'd ever come back willingly.
So, why not just skip the country? It's painfully obvious that he has no moral reason to stay and suffer punishment.
Is it a matter of difficulty? I've never (before Sept 11, at any rate) had any problem crossing the US/Canada or US/Mexico border. (I assume that's a skin-color related difficulty, and mostly when coming *from* mexico.)
I sure as hell wouldn't stick around, risking 20 years (or more) in prison in a foreign country when I could flee to my home country where everyone agreed that I hadn't committed a crime.
Assuming the litigious company (Rambus in this case) doesn't use the money to sue all their competitors out of business.
I'll support DDR SDRAM for that reason alone. The fact that it performs better in everything except MPEG encoding tests is just gravy.
Oh well, Rambus's stock value is in the toilet and there are rumors of the stockholders suing the principles for criminally bad management. I can't say I'd cry over it.
What's the correlation between saying something sensible and getting modded up, Sparky? Herd mindset again: popular, therefore good.
If a factual post, containing no blatant karma whoring, gets modded up five times (from 0) it's often an indicator that it's worth reading, even if not perfect. All in all, the high score on that post was proof of the success of the system (if only this once).
Here's a little advice for you: don't jump to conclusions. If I hated Slashdot I wouldn't be here at all; ergo, since I am here, I do not hate Slashdot.
Sorry, I was just assuming you weren't nuts. I mean, if most people insult things, they dislike them. I see you're one of those "unique" people who insults things they like. Clever strategy.
I do, however, harbor a strong dislike for the herd members such as yourself who can't distinguish an informed opinion from utter BS, let alone form such an opinion for themselves, and who drown out reasoned debate with their bleating.
Ahh yes. The only way I could possibly support the AC over you, despite him being completely correct and you being wrong and a jackass, is if I'm a herd member. Silly me, I thought I just disliked you because you were a rude and stupid; I didn't know it was "in" to bash you.
It's really a chuckle, but despite the similarity of "WhiteNight" and "DarkWhite", they aren't the same person.
I'm much more handsome and articulate.
If it panics you to no end, get the admins to check IPs.
Re:My experiences in wiring a new house
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Wiring A New House?
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· Score: 3, Insightful
Here's a little advice for you. Since you obviously hate Slashdot, don't use it. It's really easy. (See.sig)
As for the cable... Plenum rated cable is rarely required in the walls, it's usually only required in plenums, hence the name.
The safety benefits, in the wall, are very debatable. The whole point of it is to avoid filling the airways of a large building with potentially toxic smoke from a distant fire. In a home, by the time smoke escapes from the cabling in the walls you've got much worse problems.
If you have the money to burn, go ahead and install it, it's not going to cause any problems.
But, if you're really looking for safety, spend the difference on better (or more) smoke detectors, or CO detectors, or Radon detectors, etc, etc.
And as for the AC... Personally I'd rather trust an AC who said something sensible enough to get modded up rather than trusting you, a blantant troll and karma whore. Especially considering as how the AC was right and you were very wrong.
While you may be able to tell yourself that you don't have any obligation to support Win95, you're going to lose more customers (likely) by not supporting it than you would by supporting the Chinese language.
Now, if you were writing an app with a lot of Chinese appeal this might not be the case.
Or, if your app likely wouldn't work on old computers. (Doom 3, etc).
The only way they're able to get by this long is 1) the DMCA and 2) the fact that for most people there is an easy-to-use way to view them.
We need to show that them limiting access onto tools they explicitly make is like selling a book which stops working in Kansas, because as they point out, who really lives in Kansas anyways...
The only cases I know of where shrinkwrap licenses were held to be valid were cases where the buyer tried to use the data (it was a list of names/adresses/phone numbers) in a dialing program which they then distributed. They also handled the case badly, and were sued by a corporation with way more money than they had.
As for judges not being bought... Hah! There have been a lot of scandals where single judges and groups of them have been on the take. That guy in Chicago, I think, back in the 60s or 70s. And then look at the judge in the first DeCSS case (Against 2600). He worked for a major member of the MPAA, in the DVD licensing issue, and refused to recuse himself. Obvious conflict of interest.
And, you don't need a license for a book. To legally sell it they have to implicitly give you the permission to use it as you need to use it as advertised which is a collection of words you may read or not, in any order, etc.
You can't copy a book without an additional license, but neither can you legally bludgeon someone to death with it.
Perhaps some judges will find that EULAs are valid, but it goes against so much other law that you can't assume anything other than the prosecution using technicalities to ensnare the unprepared defendant, or picking a bought judge.
I don't live in Montana, nor belong to a militia, nor think that black helicopters are coming. Your implication is a groundless attack. Perhaps if there were no known cases of corruption in the legal and governmental system, might you have a point.
Would be much like me suggesting that you either have a judge/politician for a parent (or are one) or own a lot of MS/Adobe/etc stock and are willing to lie in public to manipulate the value of the stock.
1) Since when do you need permission to tell someone how to do something that is illegal. (Assuming using the Upgrade as a full version is illegal.)
2) This whole "you have to copy it to use it" is a scam the publishers came up with to try to get rights they've never had.
2.1) They show you the game working (ie, screenshots) which implies that if you buy this game you'll be able to see those things yourself. When a product doesn't come with everything required it is usually required to say so. As in, with expansion packs for Quake or something, they clearly state that they won't work without the original Quake. They don't though state that you must own the original to play with the new one, just that they aren't saying it'll work.
2.2) Even if copying the game onto the HD was a problem, what about games like Myst that play completely from the CD? Are they different under this law?
2.2.1) Transient copies of a work often have to be made to use it. If you use an overhead projector to read a book (because of bad eyes, for instance) you are making a copy on the screen.
It all comes down to this... If they sell a product that doesn't work as advertised, they're liable for false advertising and a host of other things. Thus, they must sell the product in such a way as to work as shown. If they forbid usage without a license (that you don't see and agree to before sale) they're not selling a working product.
That's just the way sales and contract law works. They are trying to pass laws like the UCITA that change this, but they know that they don't now have a leg to stand on (if sued by someone with enough cash to purpuse it) and they're trying to fix that before it comes to trial.
But, being rich they can quite literally bribe politicians ("campaign donation", what a load of shit) into passing what they want.
Slashdot Mirror
You're both lame. Him for having to prove his dick size with a game and you for not just pointing and laughing.
It's just a single-player game, using it as bragging rights is pathetic. Like bragging about how often you win at solitaire.
There are many reasons for cheats, like simply wanting to play the game you bought in the manner you like. I don't show my high-scores to anyone, or bother looking at theirs, if I cheat in a game it's because this bit is boring and I want to move on.
Allow people to import a multi-player game for single-player play, but not to go the other way.
If you store characters locally they CAN be hacked. This is a proven fact. Encryption can't help here.
Even if no game-shark devices are available a moderately skilled embedded systems engineer can rig one from their job tools.
Even if you implement checks on single-player characters (disallowing 99th level for example) the cheaters just have to use more subtle cheats.
The problem with this is that the online service needs to store characters and then needs to bother with passwords to protect them. But there's no way around this. Any worthwhile online service either doesn't allow saved characters (Q3, Counterstrike) or stores them on the server.
If you really want details on this, I don't mind going into it in email.
Return the game and demand a refund. Anyone who makes a multiplayer game that accepts those sorts of commands from a client is defective. Even a game that lets a player specify the ammount of money they have is broken.
Go play a real game from a real company that attempts to patch these kind holes.
That would be true, except that EULA's aren't binding.
They'll claim the world, and if you buy it, they'll be willing to pretend it's legal. But it's not. Ignore EULAs and just follow actual laws like copyright and (ptui) the DMCA. (If you're unlucky enough to live in the USA.)
That's my take on it. I bought the game, I want to play the whole thing, on my schedule.
I appreciate that games like driving with no inherent structure offer an OPTION to race a championship, if you feel the need for bragging material or something. But I don't want to be forced to play like that.
And with MGS. I borrowed the PC version from a friend after I heard that it was the ultimate game ever, etc, etc. I played for about 45 minutes, died three times and had to restart from the exact same spot. Ugh. I decided that it wasn't worth it.
I've easily replayed a section twenty times in Q2 and RTCW but that's because it's a section *I* liked and wanted to do better at. Those annoying sections with a few hidden snipers and you in the open... those I saved every few shots and made it through quickly, because it wasn't something I enjoyed enough to spend time at. I really resent having a developer force me to play in the same way they play.
(If nothing else, do what Soldier of Fortune did. Have a "scoring" mode where your score is recorder and you have limited saves. Have another "fun" mode where the user is in charge, but it doesn't record a high score.)
Creative Labs is the ATI of sound cards.
Just the other day I wasted two hours trying to install a SB PCI128 on Win98 SE running on a P1-133 on an Asus p55t2p4. It's the most stable hardware and MS's best 9x OS (by far).
The drivers would literally reboot the computer while installing. When (after many attempts) we got them installed Windows would generate endless errors on boot and when rebooted would have disabled the card.
Eventually we gave up and went to the "Box of Stuff" and pulled out an old no-name ISA sound card. It came up, installed drivers for SB compatibility and was playing MP3s in no time, perfectly stable.
If nVidia makes a sound card I'll buy them instantly. I've *never* had driver issues with nVidia cards and I love their common driver architecture enabling me to install the card on any Windows computer with two files, one for 9x and one for NT/2k/XP.
My only complaint towards nVidia is that many OEMs use substandard RAMDACs (I think) which results in slightly fuzzy output at 1920x1440 or above. And that's not their fault, that's the fault of the company building the card. Asus is pretty good, the really cheap cards aren't great.
This is what I came to in RPGs.
I still like reflex games because playing is the end in itself.
But RPGs force you to do the same thing over and over, not for the quest, but simply to level up so you can go on the quest.
Boring.
In a well-designed game you are given a quest and on your way to it you gain enough experience to complete it, and on that quest, gain the experience to complete the second, etc. Those are fun, or rather, as fun as the writing is good.
The ones that force you to wander around outside killing orcs for experience (or, like Zelda, pulling up bushes for gold coins) are the ones that suck.
It basically comes down to the ammount of filler vs content. I hate filler and will edit my character up enough for the next adventure, etc.
I'm quite into tactical combat though so I actually enjoyed old isomeric RPGs (like SSI's PoR and CotAB) when the battles were scripted. Yet another forest with orcs was dull.
IMHO games should come with cheat codes. Both everything cheats (god mode) and cheats that allow you to skip what you don't like... Maybe "fast walk" and "1000 gold" for Zelda and "win battle" in many RPGs. This way you could skip over the crap they use to be able to say "100+ hours of gameplay" and still do the bits you find fun.
A have friends who swear that cheating is wrong even in a single-player game. They're the nuts ones who admit they hate a part of the game, yet waste their weekend playing it, trying to get to the good stuff.
Maybe an RPG only gives me 10+ hours of gameplay, but if those are good hours, it's still a better value than a movie. And, better than 100+ hours of gameplay I hate.
So, if you went to Texas and were wrongly arrested for murder and sentenced to die, you wouldn't run, you'd choose to die with "dignity"?
/. type crowd know who he is. A few liberal-leaning newspapers have articles about him, but they haven't reached the general public.
He's not a national hero. Only the
You watch too many movies. Bounty hunters are only barely legal in some countries. There's no way a bounty hunter could kidnap a Russian citizen from Russia and transport them to the US.
And there's no way Russia would extradite him for something they not only don't think is a crime, but have a law requiring. (There has to be a way to make backup copies of protected works.)
Maybe he wanted his bail money back, but I honestly didn't think he'd avoid prison. The US is pretty stupid when it comes to laws like this with vast corporate interest.
I doubt it. Why would he care about changing US law, especially US law that was plainly bought. Even more, there's a perfect example of how that law has been enforced by a crooked judge. (Kaplan worked for an MPAA member company and was involved in creating the drafts of the DMCA. How biased can you get?)
Skylarov probably cares a bit more about being free to continue his life with his family than he does in fighting US mega corps.
Does a mod-chip allow access to the access-controled BIOS?
No.
The only reason people point out that a console contains a BIOS is to justify EULAs. (Since by using the console you're using software which requires a copy to be made in RAM, etc, etc).
However, that too is bunk because US copyright law (and most other counties) allows a temporary copy of software to be made if it's required for the use of the software. (ie, copied into RAM.)
The fact that these copies are made as soon as the machine is powered on and without any user intervention you could say either that Sony authorized to copying, or that it's required ('cause the PS2 don't work otherwise) and thus legal.
EULAs also aren't binding because they don't follow the necessary standards for contracts.
I'll support Sony going after technologies that enable piracy when they take decent steps to help people who want to backup games.
.BMPs to .JPGs and to crop pictures. I know four or five people who use it a lot and have made money (either a little, or the majority of their wage) by using it. They all own it. (Well, v5 or v6, I dunno.)
Perhaps when Sony pays all retailers to replace broken media (bring in the piece with the Sony logo, or more than 60% of the disc, etc) and receive another copy for $1, kind of thing.
Until then, I don't support companies in taking away the rights of the honest customers even if they hurt more pirates.
IMHO piracy doesn't hurt companies much. I know 20+ people who have pirated Photoshop 6, they use to convert
Those pirates wouldn't pay $20 to do what they use PS6 for, they're not going to buy it if they can't warez it.
I think the same is mostly true with games. Most gamers I know with a Q3 capable system have Q3 (warez) even if they don't really like it. But of all the people I know who play it at LAN parties (when the CD-Key isn't an issue) all but one owns it.
This "piracy is killing us" is a hoax. I'm sure they lose some potential sales, but not enough to break them.
The real crime here is in essentially taking away our legally protected rights to make backups, etc. Sony may not like NEO4, but why does that give them to right to deny people the ability to make backups?
As for backups, I don't know *anyone* who uses their original disks at a LAN party. Everyone either has a burn of the key disk or they've cracked the game so it doesn't require one. Nobody is willing to risk the original disk because they know there's no way the companies would replace them.
As you say, there's no such thing as a free lunch.
If you sell something to me for $10 you can't stop me from going and selling it to someone else for $15, even if that cuts into your intended business plan of selling it for $40.
If you want to sell it to people in rich countries, price it low enough that it's not worth them buying it in a poor country and shipping it over.
The whole concept of "veteran's discount" and such is that stores are giving this away to generate good will even though they know there's no law to specifically support it. A veteran could buy a product from a store for 20% off and sell it to someone for 10% off, pocketing the difference. Stores know this and don't make the discount too large and don't offer it on items that have a nearly 100% resale value.
It's a completely different topic for AMD to test a batch of chips and sell them at the speed they'll all perform at instead of testing each one individually. They're potentially selling more, for less. They're selling an nMhz chips and if yours works at n+100Mhz, you've got no reason to complain.
The only time this becomes objectionable would be if AMD sold a chip that could be overclocked and then tried to sue you for doing so. Luckily though, the hardware companies (with the exception of Rambus whose CEO is about a smart as a stick of warm butter) know that there's no basic in law for this.
Wrong again.
A console is just the same as a car. Buy it, strip it, rebuild it. All legal.
The DMCA applies only to software, and even this it's a product of bribery and won't last.
Games are supposed to be fun. War is not supposed to be fun.
Can you see a difference?
If I want fun, I play a game. If I want to be shot and die horribly... well, I don't, but I'd go to war, NOT play a game.
As far as I understand it, he was released on bail for a while. Unless he was under 24h surveilance he could have easily made it to Mexico or Canada at which point he could have caught a plane to Russia.
I'm sure it's all very illegal to do that, but really, who cares? It's just a US court charging him with a US law, paid for by US corps.
Once he made it home to Russia I would imagine he'd be hard to extradite. He might never be able to travel to the US again, but that's not really a big drawback, especially for him... I doubt even if all charges were dropped tomorrow (with no conditions) that he'd ever come back willingly.
So, why not just skip the country? It's painfully obvious that he has no moral reason to stay and suffer punishment.
Is it a matter of difficulty? I've never (before Sept 11, at any rate) had any problem crossing the US/Canada or US/Mexico border. (I assume that's a skin-color related difficulty, and mostly when coming *from* mexico.)
I sure as hell wouldn't stick around, risking 20 years (or more) in prison in a foreign country when I could flee to my home country where everyone agreed that I hadn't committed a crime.
Assuming the litigious company (Rambus in this case) doesn't use the money to sue all their competitors out of business.
I'll support DDR SDRAM for that reason alone. The fact that it performs better in everything except MPEG encoding tests is just gravy.
Oh well, Rambus's stock value is in the toilet and there are rumors of the stockholders suing the principles for criminally bad management. I can't say I'd cry over it.
If a factual post, containing no blatant karma whoring, gets modded up five times (from 0) it's often an indicator that it's worth reading, even if not perfect. All in all, the high score on that post was proof of the success of the system (if only this once).
Sorry, I was just assuming you weren't nuts. I mean, if most people insult things, they dislike them. I see you're one of those "unique" people who insults things they like. Clever strategy.
Ahh yes. The only way I could possibly support the AC over you, despite him being completely correct and you being wrong and a jackass, is if I'm a herd member. Silly me, I thought I just disliked you because you were a rude and stupid; I didn't know it was "in" to bash you.
It's really a chuckle, but despite the similarity of "WhiteNight" and "DarkWhite", they aren't the same person.
I'm much more handsome and articulate.
If it panics you to no end, get the admins to check IPs.
Here's a little advice for you. Since you obviously hate Slashdot, don't use it. It's really easy. (See .sig)
As for the cable... Plenum rated cable is rarely required in the walls, it's usually only required in plenums, hence the name.
The safety benefits, in the wall, are very debatable. The whole point of it is to avoid filling the airways of a large building with potentially toxic smoke from a distant fire. In a home, by the time smoke escapes from the cabling in the walls you've got much worse problems.
If you have the money to burn, go ahead and install it, it's not going to cause any problems.
But, if you're really looking for safety, spend the difference on better (or more) smoke detectors, or CO detectors, or Radon detectors, etc, etc.
And as for the AC... Personally I'd rather trust an AC who said something sensible enough to get modded up rather than trusting you, a blantant troll and karma whore. Especially considering as how the AC was right and you were very wrong.
While you may be able to tell yourself that you don't have any obligation to support Win95, you're going to lose more customers (likely) by not supporting it than you would by supporting the Chinese language.
Now, if you were writing an app with a lot of Chinese appeal this might not be the case.
Or, if your app likely wouldn't work on old computers. (Doom 3, etc).
Heh. Nothing about IRC is mission critical.
Maybe the virus will take over a few channels, but people will just find a new place to netsex and the world will go on.
Harmful means deleting files, or worse.
The only way they're able to get by this long is 1) the DMCA and 2) the fact that for most people there is an easy-to-use way to view them.
We need to show that them limiting access onto tools they explicitly make is like selling a book which stops working in Kansas, because as they point out, who really lives in Kansas anyways...
The only cases I know of where shrinkwrap licenses were held to be valid were cases where the buyer tried to use the data (it was a list of names/adresses/phone numbers) in a dialing program which they then distributed. They also handled the case badly, and were sued by a corporation with way more money than they had.
As for judges not being bought... Hah! There have been a lot of scandals where single judges and groups of them have been on the take. That guy in Chicago, I think, back in the 60s or 70s. And then look at the judge in the first DeCSS case (Against 2600). He worked for a major member of the MPAA, in the DVD licensing issue, and refused to recuse himself. Obvious conflict of interest.
And, you don't need a license for a book. To legally sell it they have to implicitly give you the permission to use it as you need to use it as advertised which is a collection of words you may read or not, in any order, etc.
You can't copy a book without an additional license, but neither can you legally bludgeon someone to death with it.
Perhaps some judges will find that EULAs are valid, but it goes against so much other law that you can't assume anything other than the prosecution using technicalities to ensnare the unprepared defendant, or picking a bought judge.
I don't live in Montana, nor belong to a militia, nor think that black helicopters are coming. Your implication is a groundless attack. Perhaps if there were no known cases of corruption in the legal and governmental system, might you have a point.
Would be much like me suggesting that you either have a judge/politician for a parent (or are one) or own a lot of MS/Adobe/etc stock and are willing to lie in public to manipulate the value of the stock.
Two points:
1) Since when do you need permission to tell someone how to do something that is illegal. (Assuming using the Upgrade as a full version is illegal.)
2) This whole "you have to copy it to use it" is a scam the publishers came up with to try to get rights they've never had.
2.1) They show you the game working (ie, screenshots) which implies that if you buy this game you'll be able to see those things yourself. When a product doesn't come with everything required it is usually required to say so. As in, with expansion packs for Quake or something, they clearly state that they won't work without the original Quake. They don't though state that you must own the original to play with the new one, just that they aren't saying it'll work.
2.2) Even if copying the game onto the HD was a problem, what about games like Myst that play completely from the CD? Are they different under this law?
2.2.1) Transient copies of a work often have to be made to use it. If you use an overhead projector to read a book (because of bad eyes, for instance) you are making a copy on the screen.
It all comes down to this... If they sell a product that doesn't work as advertised, they're liable for false advertising and a host of other things. Thus, they must sell the product in such a way as to work as shown. If they forbid usage without a license (that you don't see and agree to before sale) they're not selling a working product.
That's just the way sales and contract law works. They are trying to pass laws like the UCITA that change this, but they know that they don't now have a leg to stand on (if sued by someone with enough cash to purpuse it) and they're trying to fix that before it comes to trial.
But, being rich they can quite literally bribe politicians ("campaign donation", what a load of shit) into passing what they want.