Not at all, just the day where twenty-page "contracts" didn't come sealed in a box that you buy. If anyone actually approached consumers with a contract long enough to be read in the venue they marketed their product (ie, two-paragraph contract for something meant to be purchased in a retail-ish setting like a cell-phone.) people wouldn't consider them outrageous.
But no, people have the idea that anything they write down on paper is going to be binding just because they hand it to you, with no consideration for letting you read it in its entirety, or before the sale.
Sorry, but that's not behavior I respect. I could "not respect" it by quietly going home and being upset, or I could usefully not respect it by treating it as I would treat a phone I bought from someone I did respect. I follow common-sense guidelines, or rules for the benefit of everyone, but not rules for their sole benefit.
For instance, ISP rules about no servers. Yeah, uh huh. What's a server? Any protocol that happens to answer a port, regardless of the majority of the dataflow. And they forbid servers, not bandwidth hogging. So should I honestly follow along and not run SSH despite it not really being the problem and max-out my downloads on legit Linux ISOs, or should I try to play by the spirit of cooperation and not do anything (regardless of the rules) that would destroy the service for my neighbors such as using all the bandwidth?
If I lived by the rules of "no servers" anything else would be fine. Instead if I examine the situation and deal fairly with those involved, no method of harm is "okay" just because it wasn't mentioned.
So, in other words, you're a schmuck if you follow an abusive contract. Many people who enter offer contracts do so abusively and there's no reason to pander to that and not get a phone, or such. Just follow the reasonable rules, discard the rest. Until courts catch up with the idea that there are some things you can't contract for (not illegal, just unrelated to the apparent deal - misleading) people just need to act this way.
It was the software companies all individually including the EULAs in the box than convinced people shrink-wrap licenses are binding. Now we just need everyone individually ignoring provisions of contracts they didn't get a chance to negotiate to set the assumption that such contracts aren't binding.
The world would be a far better place if people acted based on the harm their actions would cause, NOT based on the rules that would be violated.
WoW has no economy to speak of, not in the natural adjusting way. Or monster balance, or anything. Or course a game where everyone has to stand in the same wooded area and kill the same respawning monsters is going to have a problem.
But in general, who cares if they're far-higher level, or far dumber at any given level. Play with friends, and be willing to move if someone else is genociding the poor monsters in your area.
If there really is a shortage of monsters, complain that the game doesn't properly scale. If they can instance a dungeon they can instance Orc-Slaughter Mountain, or anything.
The important thing is that if one race has lower IQs because of social reasons, to present it as such and not as a racial deficiency which would encourage discrimination (self, especially). Properly identified problems are properly corrected.
On the other hand, Michael, you do make the awfully big presumption:
"If IQ really is different for people of African descent then it is IQ which is broken."
There are obvious physical differences between people of different races. It would be ridiculous to say body-size didn't change a person's strength, and disingenious to say that head size/shape (just for one) provably does NOT have an effect on their thinking in any way.
This is like the gender debate. We know men are larger, that's politically correct to admit. But are there physical (not societal) mental differences? It's pretty much taboo to ask.
The statement should be:
If IQ scores differ for any reason commonly accepted to not actually change ability in general (skin color, native language) then the test is flawed from the practical standpoint of accurately predicting anything useful.
Yeah, that's a great excuse. "I didn't know what I was doing, those damn lawyers sprung it on me. I was so confused, they just baffled me with one of those legal argument thingies."
Perhaps if it was sprung on him last minute he could extend the hearing and take a minute to think it over, instead of wrapping up quickly to get home in time for his soaps.
Maybe it wasn't a bad decision, but if it was the blame lies squarely on the judge.
A bot runner still plays the game, except the grind, a FAQ follower just runs from point to screenshot-identified point to do the next thing.
Personally, I wouldn't let either of them ruin my fun. They'd both blow past me in levels (and power) and I'd happily be cleaning dungeons with my friends.
"Wah, his numbers are bigger than my numbers! Tazer him and make him use small numbers until he's earner the right!"
That would rock. Monopoly that did the dice rolling and property shuffling and just let you make the decisions and do the haggling. It'd be just like regular monopoly, except quick, and fun. (You did just describe the very popular field of computerized board games.)
Well, Blizzard's response is full of lies and they distort precedent far further than Public Knowledge.
Blizzard says that MAI v Peak showed that the courts allowed a license to trump 117a1, but they conveniently neglect the mention that in that case the customer had signed an agreement to be bound by the EULA. MAI is not a test of shrink-wrap licensing, yet they act as if it was.
Blizzard states that WoW users do not obtain rights via a single payment, but only by conflating the service with the software. They lie about the possibility of use of the software for non-WoW uses (bnetd, etc) to support this claim.
This "narrow" ruling will become precedent for shrink-wrap EULAs, they will override the right to use software you bought, and any violation of the EULA will be acted upon as a copyright violation instead of a violation of a post-sale contract.
The existence of a piece of paper in the box doesn't change the fact that the software was sold (ask the clerk as you buy it, if you want confirmation). Blizzard makes the same mistake many people do and assumes that because there's a EULA in the box, it must be binding. Not like a company would ever make spurious legal claims, after all.
Unless of course, the owners of those cars (WoW clients) decided to use them on another track, like bnetd. Oops, the car company just sued the other tracks into bankruptcy saying that running a racetrack is unfairly profiting off of other people's cars.
Seriously, enforce rules against the people who sign contracts. The people who promise not to play WoW with a bot.
Because even if WoW Glider doesn't get open sourced, one of these will, and then there won't be anyone to sue except the users but we'll still be stuck with these retarded precedents and many good programmers will have been put out of business in the witch-hunts.
In WoW you *must* grind. In (some) other games you can reach the high levels and see the content without grinding, but grinding is available if you want to do all the side quests, etc.
It's just that Blizzard's game are the artistic equivalent of an Alan Smithee movie - they don't put that level of consideration (for alternate gaming styles) into their design. They offer a ton of freedom, if you do exactly what the designer would do. Unlike something like GTA3 where you can wander off in the other direction and ignore the game, yet still have fun.
Skip work next week. Play sick. Oh darn, did I just induce a contract breach?
WoW Glider has plenty of uses. Fire up your WoW Client and hop onto a bnetd server, play the same sort of game but without the grinding. Oh yeah, Blizzard killed bnetd.
They should open-source the mechanics of the bot. Not WoW Glider, but MMO Assistant. The WoW-specific modules could be community developed on the side.
In many instances this could be a perfectly legal assisted play device for the disabled, the game still requires strategy just not keyboard dexterity. The blanket prohibition on bots for any reason is probably about as enforceable as a ban on animals (except guide animals, etc).
But in any case, Blizzard should sue the users who are the ones buying and using the device, and if cheating is done (as opposed to using the bot to mitigate a disability) they are the ones doing it. Anything else is just sleazy and underhanded - in other words, standard Blizzard.
No, I'd tell them to play the game however they want. The presence of a cheater doesn't change your character, you can just go elsewhere and find your own random monsters.
In fact, a cheater is mostly indistinguishable from a WoW-Addict in that both go up levels far faster than you. The cheater's skills probably aren't as good because they let the bot do the work, so you should probably look at cheaters as big bags of cool toys/cash that are relatively unguarded.
But honestly, getting bent out of shape because other people want to play 80th level content without wading through 20-80th level content. Oh noes! We must use the courts to make people play the game properly!
Because software isn't religion. There's a right answer and a wrong answer. You prove things.
Even if you can't look at a three-line code sample and follow the logic (which I doubt - if you tried) people could write a demonstration of the flaw in, for example, Ruby, which you could cut and paste into another browser window and run on someone else's computer so you didn't need to worry about trojans.
If this was legit the code would look like this
CPUID = get_cpu_id [...] case CPUID
when 'Intel' ; enable_SSE2
when 'AMD' ; enable_SSE
else ; enable_nothing end
Seriously, that's how complex it should look.
With some searching even a non-programmer could find that simply by searching for strings like SSE and the logic should be fairly clear.
That's why we should immediately terminate every government subsidy to the airlines.
Sure, tickets will be more expensive, but at least the airlines will have an incentive to try to save money. Tax money is addictive, you have no incentive to try to cut spending.
The video/tele/VR-conferencing industry should lobby to remove airline subsidies, the real costs of face-to-face meetings would help drive the creation of alternatives.
It's not like she wouldn't be saying exactly the same things to her friend if she were there.
People get so huffy over cell phones because they can, like cameras, it's a behavior they notice and can criticize, so they do. Talking is too normal to bitch about, but talking into a phone! The general human nature of wanting to make other people stop doing things they enjoy leads to trying to make the activity illegal.
Finally, as someone said at the top of the thread, can't we just let the market handle this? Let an airline run phone-free flights and let people choose? At least that way it doesn't require a law to enforce, just your contract with the airline.
You can use it, you just have to agree to pass on my conditions.
Really, it's worth a lot to me that people not be kept out of the code to the software they use. I dislike closed-source software and don't want to make it easier to write. If I GPL my code you can use it and so can your users. If I BSDL my code you can use it, but may deny the right to view our shared source code to someone else.
It's your freedom to pick the license you want versus the future rights of everyone who uses your software to have the source. They win out, especially as it feels that people who want code to be BSDLed want to reserve the right to release closed source. If you had compelling reasons that didn't involve the freedom to restrict others...
That's already what happens. Microsoft funds SCO, the community speaks out, Microsoft plays patent games, the community speaks out. Wake me when someone gets together fifty million dollars to buy a patent troll and abuse Microsoft in the name of open source. Until then, you're out to lunch.
The correct strategy when dealing with someone who has hit you every time they've seen you is to back away while expecting attack.
The reason to hate MS, and Bill Gates, is that he/it have gone out of their way to do things that would harm open source software (fund SCO, speak out against open source as if it hurt economies) and the whole economy, for their own personal gain.
Competing is one thing, trying to use bullshit court tactics to get your opponent shut down is another.
Besides, there's no proof like watching it unfold. If he did do the job well and the KDE team turned him down he could still publish the patch for users who wanted it. Beyond that, the pressure from people who wanted the working patch integrated into the main build would force the issue, if no good explanation was given and everyone assumed it was political someone very well might fork - or the possibility of it might make them merge the patch.
Until it plays out he could be talking about how good he thinks it'll be, and have heard their honest criticism as rejection.
They do level out markets because they (futures of any form) are a way to average the value over time like a sliding window average. The same as selling between two places, one that has and one that has not, you sell between times. People have a resource now (and thus undervalue it) or don't (and overvalue it) and will enter into contracts expecting the supply to remain constant, someone who expects a change can exploit this the same way as someone moving goods between physical areas.
And, as you pointed out, for the good of everyone by smoothing the economy, not harmfully as some "evil speculation" would suggest. (Really, the money they make is how we say thanks for having oil sitting around for us to buy that someone would have used last month had they not hung onto it - if we didn't want it we could just say no...)
Yes, but precedent can still be broken (wrongly decided upon or wrongly referenced). In fact, that's what the lawyers of both sides angle for so it doesn't seem that unlikely.
Read MAI v Peak, it doesn't say shrink-wrap licenses are binding - quite the opposite, but it's talked about as if it does. Not only are there specific problems with the precedents involved that everyone seems to ignore, as if every precedent is equally binding and all elements of a precedent are equal, but these same decisions set the precedents back when this was tried with books, and they were declared wrong and ignored.
So why does some half-related precedent mean this is decided, when some earlier precedent does not mean that?
As for what I've been arguing, I've been saying that despite what some schmuck in black robes wishes to declare, the law does not *work* that way. Not that it should not, but that if they try it will fail. It's contradictory. People can claim that the law works this way, but fast-forward ten years to when you "agree" to a contract to not speak ill of the restaurant you're at when buying food.
If people don't point out the flaws now, when the precedents are really out to lunch and the decisions are obviously unjust, we'll be stuck with that as an active law before we manage to get rid of it, as opposed to fighting it early. Even if some judge's precedent did change the legal climate, we need to look at the reasons I've brought up (hidden contracts, etc) and change the law BACK, to specifically make sure this doesn't go anywhere.
What do we want Youtube for though? It should be replaced by light-weight torrents and a good search page. In fact, you could seed it with everything on Youtube, including - if you really hate the world - the comments.
Slashdot Mirror
Not at all, just the day where twenty-page "contracts" didn't come sealed in a box that you buy. If anyone actually approached consumers with a contract long enough to be read in the venue they marketed their product (ie, two-paragraph contract for something meant to be purchased in a retail-ish setting like a cell-phone.) people wouldn't consider them outrageous.
But no, people have the idea that anything they write down on paper is going to be binding just because they hand it to you, with no consideration for letting you read it in its entirety, or before the sale.
Sorry, but that's not behavior I respect. I could "not respect" it by quietly going home and being upset, or I could usefully not respect it by treating it as I would treat a phone I bought from someone I did respect. I follow common-sense guidelines, or rules for the benefit of everyone, but not rules for their sole benefit.
For instance, ISP rules about no servers. Yeah, uh huh. What's a server? Any protocol that happens to answer a port, regardless of the majority of the dataflow. And they forbid servers, not bandwidth hogging. So should I honestly follow along and not run SSH despite it not really being the problem and max-out my downloads on legit Linux ISOs, or should I try to play by the spirit of cooperation and not do anything (regardless of the rules) that would destroy the service for my neighbors such as using all the bandwidth?
If I lived by the rules of "no servers" anything else would be fine. Instead if I examine the situation and deal fairly with those involved, no method of harm is "okay" just because it wasn't mentioned.
So, in other words, you're a schmuck if you follow an abusive contract. Many people who enter offer contracts do so abusively and there's no reason to pander to that and not get a phone, or such. Just follow the reasonable rules, discard the rest. Until courts catch up with the idea that there are some things you can't contract for (not illegal, just unrelated to the apparent deal - misleading) people just need to act this way.
It was the software companies all individually including the EULAs in the box than convinced people shrink-wrap licenses are binding. Now we just need everyone individually ignoring provisions of contracts they didn't get a chance to negotiate to set the assumption that such contracts aren't binding.
The world would be a far better place if people acted based on the harm their actions would cause, NOT based on the rules that would be violated.
WoW has no economy to speak of, not in the natural adjusting way. Or monster balance, or anything. Or course a game where everyone has to stand in the same wooded area and kill the same respawning monsters is going to have a problem.
But in general, who cares if they're far-higher level, or far dumber at any given level. Play with friends, and be willing to move if someone else is genociding the poor monsters in your area.
If there really is a shortage of monsters, complain that the game doesn't properly scale. If they can instance a dungeon they can instance Orc-Slaughter Mountain, or anything.
The important thing is that if one race has lower IQs because of social reasons, to present it as such and not as a racial deficiency which would encourage discrimination (self, especially). Properly identified problems are properly corrected.
On the other hand, Michael, you do make the awfully big presumption:
"If IQ really is different for people of African descent then it is IQ which is broken."
There are obvious physical differences between people of different races. It would be ridiculous to say body-size didn't change a person's strength, and disingenious to say that head size/shape (just for one) provably does NOT have an effect on their thinking in any way.
This is like the gender debate. We know men are larger, that's politically correct to admit. But are there physical (not societal) mental differences? It's pretty much taboo to ask.
The statement should be:
If IQ scores differ for any reason commonly accepted to not actually change ability in general (skin color, native language) then the test is flawed from the practical standpoint of accurately predicting anything useful.
Yeah, that's a great excuse. "I didn't know what I was doing, those damn lawyers sprung it on me. I was so confused, they just baffled me with one of those legal argument thingies."
Perhaps if it was sprung on him last minute he could extend the hearing and take a minute to think it over, instead of wrapping up quickly to get home in time for his soaps.
Maybe it wasn't a bad decision, but if it was the blame lies squarely on the judge.
And that's not hacking? (Not really no, but it would be called that if we did it...)
A bot runner still plays the game, except the grind, a FAQ follower just runs from point to screenshot-identified point to do the next thing.
Personally, I wouldn't let either of them ruin my fun. They'd both blow past me in levels (and power) and I'd happily be cleaning dungeons with my friends.
"Wah, his numbers are bigger than my numbers! Tazer him and make him use small numbers until he's earner the right!"
That would rock. Monopoly that did the dice rolling and property shuffling and just let you make the decisions and do the haggling. It'd be just like regular monopoly, except quick, and fun. (You did just describe the very popular field of computerized board games.)
Almost like the WoW Glider does for WoW.
Well, Blizzard's response is full of lies and they distort precedent far further than Public Knowledge.
Blizzard says that MAI v Peak showed that the courts allowed a license to trump 117a1, but they conveniently neglect the mention that in that case the customer had signed an agreement to be bound by the EULA. MAI is not a test of shrink-wrap licensing, yet they act as if it was.
Blizzard states that WoW users do not obtain rights via a single payment, but only by conflating the service with the software. They lie about the possibility of use of the software for non-WoW uses (bnetd, etc) to support this claim.
This "narrow" ruling will become precedent for shrink-wrap EULAs, they will override the right to use software you bought, and any violation of the EULA will be acted upon as a copyright violation instead of a violation of a post-sale contract.
The existence of a piece of paper in the box doesn't change the fact that the software was sold (ask the clerk as you buy it, if you want confirmation). Blizzard makes the same mistake many people do and assumes that because there's a EULA in the box, it must be binding. Not like a company would ever make spurious legal claims, after all.
Unless of course, the owners of those cars (WoW clients) decided to use them on another track, like bnetd. Oops, the car company just sued the other tracks into bankruptcy saying that running a racetrack is unfairly profiting off of other people's cars.
Seriously, enforce rules against the people who sign contracts. The people who promise not to play WoW with a bot.
Because even if WoW Glider doesn't get open sourced, one of these will, and then there won't be anyone to sue except the users but we'll still be stuck with these retarded precedents and many good programmers will have been put out of business in the witch-hunts.
In WoW you *must* grind. In (some) other games you can reach the high levels and see the content without grinding, but grinding is available if you want to do all the side quests, etc.
It's just that Blizzard's game are the artistic equivalent of an Alan Smithee movie - they don't put that level of consideration (for alternate gaming styles) into their design. They offer a ton of freedom, if you do exactly what the designer would do. Unlike something like GTA3 where you can wander off in the other direction and ignore the game, yet still have fun.
Skip work next week. Play sick. Oh darn, did I just induce a contract breach?
WoW Glider has plenty of uses. Fire up your WoW Client and hop onto a bnetd server, play the same sort of game but without the grinding. Oh yeah, Blizzard killed bnetd.
They should open-source the mechanics of the bot. Not WoW Glider, but MMO Assistant. The WoW-specific modules could be community developed on the side.
In many instances this could be a perfectly legal assisted play device for the disabled, the game still requires strategy just not keyboard dexterity. The blanket prohibition on bots for any reason is probably about as enforceable as a ban on animals (except guide animals, etc).
But in any case, Blizzard should sue the users who are the ones buying and using the device, and if cheating is done (as opposed to using the bot to mitigate a disability) they are the ones doing it. Anything else is just sleazy and underhanded - in other words, standard Blizzard.
No, I'd tell them to play the game however they want. The presence of a cheater doesn't change your character, you can just go elsewhere and find your own random monsters.
In fact, a cheater is mostly indistinguishable from a WoW-Addict in that both go up levels far faster than you. The cheater's skills probably aren't as good because they let the bot do the work, so you should probably look at cheaters as big bags of cool toys/cash that are relatively unguarded.
But honestly, getting bent out of shape because other people want to play 80th level content without wading through 20-80th level content. Oh noes! We must use the courts to make people play the game properly!
Because software isn't religion. There's a right answer and a wrong answer. You prove things.
Even if you can't look at a three-line code sample and follow the logic (which I doubt - if you tried) people could write a demonstration of the flaw in, for example, Ruby, which you could cut and paste into another browser window and run on someone else's computer so you didn't need to worry about trojans.
If this was legit the code would look like this
CPUID = get_cpu_id
[...]
case CPUID
when 'Intel' ; enable_SSE2
when 'AMD' ; enable_SSE
else ; enable_nothing
end
Seriously, that's how complex it should look.
With some searching even a non-programmer could find that simply by searching for strings like SSE and the logic should be fairly clear.
That's why we should immediately terminate every government subsidy to the airlines.
Sure, tickets will be more expensive, but at least the airlines will have an incentive to try to save money. Tax money is addictive, you have no incentive to try to cut spending.
The video/tele/VR-conferencing industry should lobby to remove airline subsidies, the real costs of face-to-face meetings would help drive the creation of alternatives.
Exactly.
It's not like she wouldn't be saying exactly the same things to her friend if she were there.
People get so huffy over cell phones because they can, like cameras, it's a behavior they notice and can criticize, so they do. Talking is too normal to bitch about, but talking into a phone! The general human nature of wanting to make other people stop doing things they enjoy leads to trying to make the activity illegal.
Finally, as someone said at the top of the thread, can't we just let the market handle this? Let an airline run phone-free flights and let people choose? At least that way it doesn't require a law to enforce, just your contract with the airline.
There ought to be a law against crazy laws...
You can use it, you just have to agree to pass on my conditions.
Really, it's worth a lot to me that people not be kept out of the code to the software they use. I dislike closed-source software and don't want to make it easier to write. If I GPL my code you can use it and so can your users. If I BSDL my code you can use it, but may deny the right to view our shared source code to someone else.
It's your freedom to pick the license you want versus the future rights of everyone who uses your software to have the source. They win out, especially as it feels that people who want code to be BSDLed want to reserve the right to release closed source. If you had compelling reasons that didn't involve the freedom to restrict others...
That's already what happens. Microsoft funds SCO, the community speaks out, Microsoft plays patent games, the community speaks out. Wake me when someone gets together fifty million dollars to buy a patent troll and abuse Microsoft in the name of open source. Until then, you're out to lunch.
The correct strategy when dealing with someone who has hit you every time they've seen you is to back away while expecting attack.
You forget SCO?
No, lack of innovation wouldn't be.
The reason to hate MS, and Bill Gates, is that he/it have gone out of their way to do things that would harm open source software (fund SCO, speak out against open source as if it hurt economies) and the whole economy, for their own personal gain.
Competing is one thing, trying to use bullshit court tactics to get your opponent shut down is another.
Besides, there's no proof like watching it unfold. If he did do the job well and the KDE team turned him down he could still publish the patch for users who wanted it. Beyond that, the pressure from people who wanted the working patch integrated into the main build would force the issue, if no good explanation was given and everyone assumed it was political someone very well might fork - or the possibility of it might make them merge the patch.
Until it plays out he could be talking about how good he thinks it'll be, and have heard their honest criticism as rejection.
If you use my code, I get to use your code.
If my code isn't valuable enough to warrant that, I understand and welcome you to make the deal with someone else.
They do level out markets because they (futures of any form) are a way to average the value over time like a sliding window average. The same as selling between two places, one that has and one that has not, you sell between times. People have a resource now (and thus undervalue it) or don't (and overvalue it) and will enter into contracts expecting the supply to remain constant, someone who expects a change can exploit this the same way as someone moving goods between physical areas.
And, as you pointed out, for the good of everyone by smoothing the economy, not harmfully as some "evil speculation" would suggest. (Really, the money they make is how we say thanks for having oil sitting around for us to buy that someone would have used last month had they not hung onto it - if we didn't want it we could just say no...)
other than recent precedent?
Case law is part of the law (see: stare decisis).
Yes, but precedent can still be broken (wrongly decided upon or wrongly referenced). In fact, that's what the lawyers of both sides angle for so it doesn't seem that unlikely.
Read MAI v Peak, it doesn't say shrink-wrap licenses are binding - quite the opposite, but it's talked about as if it does. Not only are there specific problems with the precedents involved that everyone seems to ignore, as if every precedent is equally binding and all elements of a precedent are equal, but these same decisions set the precedents back when this was tried with books, and they were declared wrong and ignored.
So why does some half-related precedent mean this is decided, when some earlier precedent does not mean that?
As for what I've been arguing, I've been saying that despite what some schmuck in black robes wishes to declare, the law does not *work* that way. Not that it should not, but that if they try it will fail. It's contradictory. People can claim that the law works this way, but fast-forward ten years to when you "agree" to a contract to not speak ill of the restaurant you're at when buying food.
If people don't point out the flaws now, when the precedents are really out to lunch and the decisions are obviously unjust, we'll be stuck with that as an active law before we manage to get rid of it, as opposed to fighting it early. Even if some judge's precedent did change the legal climate, we need to look at the reasons I've brought up (hidden contracts, etc) and change the law BACK, to specifically make sure this doesn't go anywhere.
You could be right or you could be a terrorist trying to destroy public confidence in the system.
Records show that you're 93% likely to be the same gender as Osama Bin Laden, or his mother, so maybe a few taserings will make you talk.
What do we want Youtube for though? It should be replaced by light-weight torrents and a good search page. In fact, you could seed it with everything on Youtube, including - if you really hate the world - the comments.