Justify illegal activities? No. But sure as hell laugh at the casinos getting stung. Yes.
I understand the reason we don't just go attack those we think are guilty of hurting us. Yes. But I also know that if someone tried to steal your car, parked it in his garage and faulty wiring in it burnt his house down, that it would be reasonable payback. If a thief beat you up for your wallet and was hit by a car as he ran away, it'd be hilarious and justified.
I support free choice. A druggie or gambling addict should be able to find their vice. But that doesn't mean I *like* the people who provide these vices. In fact, if everyone working in a casino suddenly died, the world would be a far better place. Ditto crack dealers. A junkie who kills his dealer for a fix has broken the law, but made the world a better place.
Gambling is just a legal form of crack, those pushing it have just as little regard for those whose lives are destroyed.
As for the same scheme, I meant that anything goes. Card counting is legal, yet you'll be pitched out of any casino if you appear to be winning. That doesn't sound like they're actually gambling, more like they refuse to really take the risks they claim. I'm not saying that this should have been thoroughly legal, just that police shouldn't have pursued this with any more vigor than claims that a casino let a mentally unfit person gamble - not at all in other words.
It's ridiculous to patent the components of something that self-reproduces.
Let Monsanto sit on it until they come up with a fool-proof way of keeping their seeds limited to those who buy them.
I want millions, and I've written software that I'm sure would help Monsanto. Should I patent it then slip it into their company networks via a worm and sue them? Seems like a winning strategy.
After all, if they hadn't wanted my patented software their IT department should have inspected every network packet, by hand if necessary...
People who advocate patent/copyright extension are the biggest leeches/thieves in society today. Some thing may be hard to research without a known market (drugs, that the government regulates heavily) but for every semi-valid patent there are a thousand absolute liars patents XOR and cat entertainment via laser pointers.
This is my winning strategy for casinos. Work parties and such are often held at them so I keep the free tokens and cash them out on the way.
A vanishingly few other people might actually be honest when they say they consistently leave casinos with more money than when they arrived, but for me it's true.:)
That said, casinos don't care if their profit ruins your life... I don't lose much sleep over people stealing from them. Two wrongs don't make a right, but they make both parties right for each other.
As was said, the casinos are very quick to take your money on a technicality and refuse to point out technical errors in your playing. Even going so far as to refuse to play with anyone who seems to be skilled. Why should someone point out their technical errors?
If you run a casino, you deserve far worse. Being shot up with crack and watching your new addiction ruin your life would be about right. Merely losing some money from the same scheme you try on others... justice.
But buying a laptop with Windows *does* make it legal to install that copy on another computer. Microsoft says otherwise, but their EULA is worth every dollar I was paid to agree to it.
EULAs are post-sale restrictions. In fact, telling someone they're valid when you know they aren't is likely fraud. Considering that the companies who do this are intentionally misrepresenting the truth for commercial gain.
And similarly, if you buy a license to use patented technology, you can modify the software or hardware that uses that license. Do you think your car is illegal to modify just because some parts are licensed patented technology? Do you think using a patented muffler is okay on a Chevy, but becomes illegal if duct-taped onto a Honda?
Ignore your EULAs and install your DVD-player under Wine, or simply use it as patent indemnification.
It's not like his friends wouldn't let him wager print-outs versus real cards, it's that they wouldn't play at all.
The game rules are such that these players are encouraged to act this way. Yes. But they're total douches for doing so. It's a totally transparent way to maintain an unfair edge in the actual competition and lying about their motives as they all do is pretty lame. (Movie downloaders suddenly concerned with copyright issues...)
I managed to find the ACM article on another site without registration. It's basically the same as Joel on Software's article on how some people just don't get pointers.
Wow, paid journals suck. Not being able to read an article someone mentions is so historical. Like Amazon, they clutter search results with things that aren't really available.
"You want to know the rest of that quote you searched for? Well, we won't tell you, but we'll show you which book it's from and let you buy it! It'll arrive weeks from now and be totally useless to the problem at hand." -- Crap Merchant
I wish there was a greasemonkey filter to remove all links to pay sites in Google searches. Any site that requires registration to view *any* of its content isn't likely to have high quality content for long.
If the 'key' isn't very random (RSS feed of Slashdot - guaranteed to contain the word "Micro$oft" twice a day...) then this isn't good security. Also problematic is the plaintext downloading (RSS) of the key material, and how anyone examining your weblogs could determine the source and simple read it themselves.
But, overall, the idea of XORing a random key as long as the source text works. You need a random key and to keep it secret and *never* reuse it. This is important, any reuse and simple known plaintext methods can often crack it in seconds.
Essentially a stream cypher can be thought of as a one-time-pad where a psuedo-random number generator (PRNG) which you seed with your key generates the pad material to the same length as the file.
But what financial incentive does a company have to make your encryption secure? Maybe a little if they're 1) good and 2) dedicated. Bruce Schneier has a rep worth keeping.
Microsoft on the other hand? Even MS-bashing aside, they have a horrible reputation for security even still. They offer no guarantees of correctness and no warranties (expressly) in the case of failure, even known problems.
An independent coder on the other hand is at least protecting his files...
That's the reason WoW's design blows. What possible reason is there for everyone to be able to max their stats at the same place? In any other game there'd be a surplus of skills so that while powerful people might tend to similarity they wouldn't be identical.
While I dislike Eve Online (dishonesty from the makers, grinding) I like its skill tree. Too large for anyone to ever have all of and not based on hours in game.
Or, by recognizing it you can dance all over other people's attempts to pigeon hole everyone else. If they have a l33t sword, buy one for everyone. Perhaps it's mean, but anyone who can only be happy by having something better isn't going to improve the world for themselves or anyone else anyway.
Can you link to this UO thing you mention, it sounds good but "ultima mead red hair dye" didn't find anything.
Personally, I think people who monetize/exploit scarcity are sick. I realize it's financially the win, but when you enforce a false scarcity it always involves fascist and unrealistic laws.
In other words, you'd play with anyone of an equivalent skill level?
Seems reasonable then. No need to give up your fun just because someone else bypassed the line and enjoys himself, you just may not be at his level (or maybe are far ahead) and don't need to compete either way.
Obviously there's a ranking system to avoid a new lvl70 from fighting the toughest, so doesn't this reflect their (theoretical) skill? If I buy stuff that beats yours, you wouldn't be tricked into PvPing me, would you?
Well, the DMCA doesn't affect me, unless I travel to the USA. Generic copyright/sale law allows modification of anything you own. I meant 'sue' in the generic sense you tell someone who threatens you with something completely baseless.
"They" (restaurant, Blizzard, etc) can terminate a contract at any time, but if it was done for unacceptable reasons (extortion, etc) it's illegal in a larger sense and also carries potential civil penalties. Perhaps you can be kicked out of a concert for inappropriate dress, but if they let you in there looking like it and ejected you for it later, they're in the wrong.
Blizzard refuses to discuss this, frequently is wrong (read all the wrongfully banned blogs), and never gives a refund, especially of your related costs. As I see it, this is as illegal as if your landlord kicked you out for a violation he knew before you moved in (had a pet, perhaps). You'd have a pretty good claim at not paying outstanding rent, getting the damage deposit back, getting free rent at the next place, and free moving. In fact, if your character, chat logs, etc, is your data, then this is theft.
Blizzard and AtBatt are the two companies I've dealt with that have gone so far as totally failing to provide a product, both have immediately turned and tried to blame me for their complex post-sale restrictions. Liars and scum...
No, in the real world the value of a dodge viper would remain the same. It would be as fast, etc. Only a small amount of its value, that related to penis size, would change. For fake e-items that only decorate your character, that's all of the value.
I can hardly believe people have been convinced that something that isn't fun and they aren't allowed to skip past is a game.
With First-Person Shooters you can see a dichotomy between the two styles. Doom/Quake let you save anytime, load anytime, and replay an area endlessly. Soldier of Fortune had limited save points, limited reloads, etc. (You could turn this off, but it was on by default.) The devs might have forced me to be a better player to reach any specific piece of content (less reloads) but the game stunk because of the console feel. Doom on the other hand caters to someone reloading endlessly trying to beat something. Theoretically Doom should have made me a worse player, but not only did Doom encourage replay (just the areas you really want to redo) but that practice made me a much better player than doing it "right" once and hating the game.
I still jump into Doom2 every now and then to replay my favorite bits. I type in a cheat code (oh noes!) and am right where I want, armed and ready. So many games are just about restricting access to the fun content, it takes a good game to be fun throughout.
Good idea, if they're sued by the initial dealer for violating the shrink-wrap license on the bag of drugs which limited resale unlawfully, it'll be exactly the same issue.
Are you trying to troll and just very bad, or can you really not think this through yourself?
You're right, but that doesn't mean we should cater to this insane desire for self-rating.
The people who need this social boost though, are the same who hang out on IRC to get ops. Long ago ops stopped being useful for any technical reason (chans are safe,/ignore works, etc) but it's still traded as a symbol of the in crowd. Nobody needs to kick a griefer anymore, but everyone is prepped to kick anyone who doesn't suck up properly.
These self-appointed fairness monitors are the real problem. If they'd all choke and die simultaneously the real problem would be solved. Are there any studies about the long-term effects of shattering these people's world-views (by not forcing others into the rankings they desire to make)? Maybe by taking some self-righteous jerk who declares that only his method of item acquisition is truly fair, and buying a better item for everyone except him...
The only problem is that you have a choice. Play some crap like WoW that's mainly based on the grind, or you could play a real game.
If you stay in WoW despite this you reduce the incentive for a company to offer an actually fun game.
It's bad for you to dump your cash into a travesty like Blizzard while they shit on games and gamers. Like buying an MS product and funding (whatever your view on OSS) a pathetic patent battle that will hurt the industry.
Which is it? Are gold-buyers crafty geniuses, buffing already extreme PvP monsters, or imbeciles who can't control their ill-gotten character? Can you tell them because they're so much better, or so much worse?
Either way, why don't you PvP someone your own size, regardless of level, and take advantage of clueless newbs with loads of cash? How does this ruin *your* game? Not some ladder of scores that only the dickless care about, but your actual gameplay.
Oh god, this is comedy gold. You're worried that you won't do well in an interview to be allowed to play a game with other people because you haven't ground heavily enough to keep up with the item buyers. And you do this for fun?
A real game would be playable at whatever level you were at, and fun to play.
It doesn't disrupt me in games that someone is twice my level. Should I interview them to find out if they bought the character so that I would know to get mad?
So play against the newb and beat him, rub his nose in it. Problem solved and lulz for all!
I honestly think you're the sick fuck for thinking that you need to rate yourself against others in a game. Also fairly dense for picking a lame game (not chess) where people could simply buy results.
It's not like they're cheating at a contest and taking an unfair prize though. They're simply choosing to play less of one of the crappiest "games" around.
Slashdot Mirror
Justify illegal activities? No. But sure as hell laugh at the casinos getting stung. Yes.
I understand the reason we don't just go attack those we think are guilty of hurting us. Yes. But I also know that if someone tried to steal your car, parked it in his garage and faulty wiring in it burnt his house down, that it would be reasonable payback. If a thief beat you up for your wallet and was hit by a car as he ran away, it'd be hilarious and justified.
I support free choice. A druggie or gambling addict should be able to find their vice. But that doesn't mean I *like* the people who provide these vices. In fact, if everyone working in a casino suddenly died, the world would be a far better place. Ditto crack dealers. A junkie who kills his dealer for a fix has broken the law, but made the world a better place.
Gambling is just a legal form of crack, those pushing it have just as little regard for those whose lives are destroyed.
As for the same scheme, I meant that anything goes. Card counting is legal, yet you'll be pitched out of any casino if you appear to be winning. That doesn't sound like they're actually gambling, more like they refuse to really take the risks they claim. I'm not saying that this should have been thoroughly legal, just that police shouldn't have pursued this with any more vigor than claims that a casino let a mentally unfit person gamble - not at all in other words.
It's ridiculous to patent the components of something that self-reproduces.
Let Monsanto sit on it until they come up with a fool-proof way of keeping their seeds limited to those who buy them.
I want millions, and I've written software that I'm sure would help Monsanto. Should I patent it then slip it into their company networks via a worm and sue them? Seems like a winning strategy.
After all, if they hadn't wanted my patented software their IT department should have inspected every network packet, by hand if necessary...
People who advocate patent/copyright extension are the biggest leeches/thieves in society today. Some thing may be hard to research without a known market (drugs, that the government regulates heavily) but for every semi-valid patent there are a thousand absolute liars patents XOR and cat entertainment via laser pointers.
This is very handy for them. They're no more honest than the day before, but appear much more so because they eliminated someone supposedly dishonest.
This is my winning strategy for casinos. Work parties and such are often held at them so I keep the free tokens and cash them out on the way.
:)
A vanishingly few other people might actually be honest when they say they consistently leave casinos with more money than when they arrived, but for me it's true.
That said, casinos don't care if their profit ruins your life... I don't lose much sleep over people stealing from them. Two wrongs don't make a right, but they make both parties right for each other.
As was said, the casinos are very quick to take your money on a technicality and refuse to point out technical errors in your playing. Even going so far as to refuse to play with anyone who seems to be skilled. Why should someone point out their technical errors?
If you run a casino, you deserve far worse. Being shot up with crack and watching your new addiction ruin your life would be about right. Merely losing some money from the same scheme you try on others... justice.
But buying a laptop with Windows *does* make it legal to install that copy on another computer. Microsoft says otherwise, but their EULA is worth every dollar I was paid to agree to it.
EULAs are post-sale restrictions. In fact, telling someone they're valid when you know they aren't is likely fraud. Considering that the companies who do this are intentionally misrepresenting the truth for commercial gain.
And similarly, if you buy a license to use patented technology, you can modify the software or hardware that uses that license. Do you think your car is illegal to modify just because some parts are licensed patented technology? Do you think using a patented muffler is okay on a Chevy, but becomes illegal if duct-taped onto a Honda?
Ignore your EULAs and install your DVD-player under Wine, or simply use it as patent indemnification.
It's not like his friends wouldn't let him wager print-outs versus real cards, it's that they wouldn't play at all.
The game rules are such that these players are encouraged to act this way. Yes. But they're total douches for doing so. It's a totally transparent way to maintain an unfair edge in the actual competition and lying about their motives as they all do is pretty lame. (Movie downloaders suddenly concerned with copyright issues...)
I managed to find the ACM article on another site without registration. It's basically the same as Joel on Software's article on how some people just don't get pointers.
Wow, paid journals suck. Not being able to read an article someone mentions is so historical. Like Amazon, they clutter search results with things that aren't really available.
"You want to know the rest of that quote you searched for? Well, we won't tell you, but we'll show you which book it's from and let you buy it! It'll arrive weeks from now and be totally useless to the problem at hand." -- Crap Merchant
I wish there was a greasemonkey filter to remove all links to pay sites in Google searches. Any site that requires registration to view *any* of its content isn't likely to have high quality content for long.
If the 'key' isn't very random (RSS feed of Slashdot - guaranteed to contain the word "Micro$oft" twice a day...) then this isn't good security. Also problematic is the plaintext downloading (RSS) of the key material, and how anyone examining your weblogs could determine the source and simple read it themselves.
But, overall, the idea of XORing a random key as long as the source text works. You need a random key and to keep it secret and *never* reuse it. This is important, any reuse and simple known plaintext methods can often crack it in seconds.
Essentially a stream cypher can be thought of as a one-time-pad where a psuedo-random number generator (PRNG) which you seed with your key generates the pad material to the same length as the file.
Gotta love how you'd be less happy with a new BMW just because other people got to play with one too.
Choke and die.
But what financial incentive does a company have to make your encryption secure? Maybe a little if they're 1) good and 2) dedicated. Bruce Schneier has a rep worth keeping.
Microsoft on the other hand? Even MS-bashing aside, they have a horrible reputation for security even still. They offer no guarantees of correctness and no warranties (expressly) in the case of failure, even known problems.
An independent coder on the other hand is at least protecting his files...
Well, skill and items...
That's the reason WoW's design blows. What possible reason is there for everyone to be able to max their stats at the same place? In any other game there'd be a surplus of skills so that while powerful people might tend to similarity they wouldn't be identical.
While I dislike Eve Online (dishonesty from the makers, grinding) I like its skill tree. Too large for anyone to ever have all of and not based on hours in game.
Or, by recognizing it you can dance all over other people's attempts to pigeon hole everyone else. If they have a l33t sword, buy one for everyone. Perhaps it's mean, but anyone who can only be happy by having something better isn't going to improve the world for themselves or anyone else anyway.
Can you link to this UO thing you mention, it sounds good but "ultima mead red hair dye" didn't find anything.
Personally, I think people who monetize/exploit scarcity are sick. I realize it's financially the win, but when you enforce a false scarcity it always involves fascist and unrealistic laws.
In other words, you'd play with anyone of an equivalent skill level?
Seems reasonable then. No need to give up your fun just because someone else bypassed the line and enjoys himself, you just may not be at his level (or maybe are far ahead) and don't need to compete either way.
Obviously there's a ranking system to avoid a new lvl70 from fighting the toughest, so doesn't this reflect their (theoretical) skill? If I buy stuff that beats yours, you wouldn't be tricked into PvPing me, would you?
Well, the DMCA doesn't affect me, unless I travel to the USA. Generic copyright/sale law allows modification of anything you own. I meant 'sue' in the generic sense you tell someone who threatens you with something completely baseless.
"They" (restaurant, Blizzard, etc) can terminate a contract at any time, but if it was done for unacceptable reasons (extortion, etc) it's illegal in a larger sense and also carries potential civil penalties. Perhaps you can be kicked out of a concert for inappropriate dress, but if they let you in there looking like it and ejected you for it later, they're in the wrong.
Blizzard refuses to discuss this, frequently is wrong (read all the wrongfully banned blogs), and never gives a refund, especially of your related costs. As I see it, this is as illegal as if your landlord kicked you out for a violation he knew before you moved in (had a pet, perhaps). You'd have a pretty good claim at not paying outstanding rent, getting the damage deposit back, getting free rent at the next place, and free moving. In fact, if your character, chat logs, etc, is your data, then this is theft.
Blizzard and AtBatt are the two companies I've dealt with that have gone so far as totally failing to provide a product, both have immediately turned and tried to blame me for their complex post-sale restrictions. Liars and scum...
Depends if you were the first hunter or not.
No, in the real world the value of a dodge viper would remain the same. It would be as fast, etc. Only a small amount of its value, that related to penis size, would change. For fake e-items that only decorate your character, that's all of the value.
I can hardly believe people have been convinced that something that isn't fun and they aren't allowed to skip past is a game.
With First-Person Shooters you can see a dichotomy between the two styles. Doom/Quake let you save anytime, load anytime, and replay an area endlessly. Soldier of Fortune had limited save points, limited reloads, etc. (You could turn this off, but it was on by default.) The devs might have forced me to be a better player to reach any specific piece of content (less reloads) but the game stunk because of the console feel. Doom on the other hand caters to someone reloading endlessly trying to beat something. Theoretically Doom should have made me a worse player, but not only did Doom encourage replay (just the areas you really want to redo) but that practice made me a much better player than doing it "right" once and hating the game.
I still jump into Doom2 every now and then to replay my favorite bits. I type in a cheat code (oh noes!) and am right where I want, armed and ready. So many games are just about restricting access to the fun content, it takes a good game to be fun throughout.
Good idea, if they're sued by the initial dealer for violating the shrink-wrap license on the bag of drugs which limited resale unlawfully, it'll be exactly the same issue.
Are you trying to troll and just very bad, or can you really not think this through yourself?
Rather, if everyone had mostly the same gear it'd be fun. As is, it *is* like counterstrike, where the people playing the longest have the best stuff.
You're right, but that doesn't mean we should cater to this insane desire for self-rating.
/ignore works, etc) but it's still traded as a symbol of the in crowd. Nobody needs to kick a griefer anymore, but everyone is prepped to kick anyone who doesn't suck up properly.
The people who need this social boost though, are the same who hang out on IRC to get ops. Long ago ops stopped being useful for any technical reason (chans are safe,
These self-appointed fairness monitors are the real problem. If they'd all choke and die simultaneously the real problem would be solved. Are there any studies about the long-term effects of shattering these people's world-views (by not forcing others into the rankings they desire to make)? Maybe by taking some self-righteous jerk who declares that only his method of item acquisition is truly fair, and buying a better item for everyone except him...
The only problem is that you have a choice. Play some crap like WoW that's mainly based on the grind, or you could play a real game.
If you stay in WoW despite this you reduce the incentive for a company to offer an actually fun game.
It's bad for you to dump your cash into a travesty like Blizzard while they shit on games and gamers. Like buying an MS product and funding (whatever your view on OSS) a pathetic patent battle that will hurt the industry.
Which is it? Are gold-buyers crafty geniuses, buffing already extreme PvP monsters, or imbeciles who can't control their ill-gotten character? Can you tell them because they're so much better, or so much worse?
Either way, why don't you PvP someone your own size, regardless of level, and take advantage of clueless newbs with loads of cash? How does this ruin *your* game? Not some ladder of scores that only the dickless care about, but your actual gameplay.
Oh god, this is comedy gold. You're worried that you won't do well in an interview to be allowed to play a game with other people because you haven't ground heavily enough to keep up with the item buyers. And you do this for fun?
A real game would be playable at whatever level you were at, and fun to play.
It doesn't disrupt me in games that someone is twice my level. Should I interview them to find out if they bought the character so that I would know to get mad?
So play against the newb and beat him, rub his nose in it. Problem solved and lulz for all!
I honestly think you're the sick fuck for thinking that you need to rate yourself against others in a game. Also fairly dense for picking a lame game (not chess) where people could simply buy results.
It's not like they're cheating at a contest and taking an unfair prize though. They're simply choosing to play less of one of the crappiest "games" around.