They won't. To Amazon, your borrowing history is "product" that they can package and sell to advertisers and their own internal teams. It would be like asking them to burn money.
WTF!? With nothing but minimalistic protections such as adblock and noscript I get nothing but I blank page trying to view the linked site. Seriously, what are they trying to pull here?
They're trying to make sure readers don't steal bandwidth by preventing the display of the ads that pay for the site?
You should probably get used to seeing it, websites are doing it more and more often. I'm surprised Slashdot's comments section doesn't die if you block it's advertisement code.
FF12 originally had either Basch (the soldier who gets screwed over before the game) or Balthier (middle aged sky pirate with the furry bunnygirl in a spygirl outfit sidekick -- aka, Han Solo and a disturbingly sexy Chewwie) as the main characters, depending on which version of the story you read. Then the director (Yasumi Matsuno) had a nervous breakdown from working conditions at Square Enix and they replaced him with the guy who did the SaGa games (Akitoshi Kawazu). Around the same time, the "Belts, Belts Everywhere" guy behind Kingdom Hearts started getting more pull at SE and convinced them that no gamer would ever empathize with an old protagonist like the ancient Basch (almost 30) or old man Balthier (mid 20s).
So enter Vaan, who was shoehorned in halfway through development and honestly doesn't belong there. About halfway through the story he just kinda... stops showing up in cutscenes, too. They could have completely cut him and his sister from the game and it wouldn't have affected the story, at all.
Who knows what would have happened if Matsuno hadn't been quite literally driven mad by Square Enix's internal culture or if Nomura had been regulated to drawing belt and zipper slash fics.
Mojang founder Notch had offered to settle the dispute with a friendly game of Quake 3, but apparently Bethesda wasn't up for that."
Yes, because he is an idiot.
Not at all. This is equal parts a legal battle and a PR battle.
Minecraft has a significant amount of credibility. It is a beloved name, and has a lot of goodwill.
And so do the Eldar Scrolls and Bethesda.
By making his claim, he was giving them an out to retain some face, and reinforced his persona of the gamer everydude gone successful.
By refusing it, Bethesda comes across as a soulless corporate entity.
But lets not forget the major problem with this whole mess. Bethesda is claiming the ownership of the concept of Scrolls in video games. This is something that has a laughable amount of prior history, and should be laughed out of court. SHOULD being the key words here.
FF11 and FF14 never seemed like they were FF games in the first place, so they didn't tarnish my perception of the brand, at least as far as I'm aware. On the other hand, FFX, FFX-2, FF12, and FF13...
FF10 was ok. FFX-2 was amazing. If you took the story tongue in cheek (like it was clearly meant to be), the battle engine and gameplay was just plain fun.
FF12 was a bit too politically heavy, but it was fun having what amounted to a FF Sandbox game.
FF13 was just shit, however. Interesting battle system, but the current executives at Square Enix must have a VERY low opinion of gamers to think that they had to dumb the rest of the game down to that level.
I'm worried that the same stupidity has their hands on Dragon Quest 10, which apparently is going to have online features similar to Demons's Souls / Monster Hunter / PSO. Not a MMO (but try telling that to the idiots in the gaming journalism industry) but just enough online capabilities to be interesting. Still, kinda worried. They are letting the idiot who did Nier have a crack at working with Yuji Hoori, and that's just a bad idea.
FTA: "Scale is too strong to use on a living animal"
Yeah, I thought the same thing. It'd be kind of cool to see a transparent mouse. (If also disturbing.)
To say nothing about what would happen if the next Lady Gaga got ahold of this stuff.
Still, it's an interesting development. Wonder if they can replicate the effect with something more conductive to living tissue. I'm thinking Transparent Eyes, or tough wooden windows that are much less likely to be broken into. Or for the truly green out there, a solid wood computer monitor.
Interesting claim. I take it since this is on video, the resultant clip is on Youtube or something? Can you point it out to me, or is this just another "I heard he fucks goats" style Political FUD attack?
But this document does raise the question... can WikiLeaks or other leak sites be "selective" in their leaks?
Hilariously, the biggest complaint about them a few months back when the US was doing everything in it's power (and more than a few illegal things, see also: Julian Assange, "kangaroo court") to silence them was that they weren't being selective in their leaks.
Or worse still, they weren't letting the US government do the selecting.
ok so - why would they want to do this again - especially when Square didn't give them that authority..
The coupon was for a digital download of the game via OnLive, or something similar -- Gamestop has a vested interest in killing off and preventing the rise of digital distribution.
Fair enough. But my point was that "leaking" reports of corruption to the public is considered a crime. Funny how that works. And not 'haha funny'.
And if the reports turn out to be false? If they're fake reports being used as part of a sting? If the person being investigated is being pressured to turn states' evidence on other, more serious issues of corruption?
Sometimes keeping a cap on the rumor mill is a good thing.
Do you install a Windows onto your computer when you install the Linux OS?
Windows as it pertains to a software program is not common usage.
If I ask my parents, my coworkers, and even some of the people at my school? Yes, they are interested in hearing about this "Windows Linux" that I keep talking about.
Just like how a lot of my friends are interested in trying out "Windows Chrome" cause it might be better than "Windows Explorer".
Exactly! this is like Apple suing for someone who used the word 'case" because they sell a case for the iPod. Nobody calls it "Elder scrolls" and even in their own marketing it has been Oblivion, Morrowind, etc.
While I hope the guy tells them where to jump sadly in this country justice is for the rich and they could crush the poor bastard like a bug by tying his ass up in court for a decade so he'll probably have to cave.
More like Apple suing someone for using the word Apple, or the word Pod. Say what you will, someone selling an "Apple PC" or a "ePod Music Player" would probably be looked at with a raised eyebrow in the US.
"Today, I got a 15 page letter from some Swedish lawyer firm, saying they demand us to stop using the name Scrolls, that they will sue us (and have already paid the fee to the Swedish court), and that they demand a pile of money up front before the legal process has even started."
Forgive me if I'm wrong, but isn't it a standard not-technically-a scam in the EU / UK for legal departments to file on behalf of customers they don't actually represent, requesting legal fees and the like? Something to do with how the courts (particularly the trademark system) works over there?
I seem to remember many, many, MANY moons ago a discussion on Slashdot about some legal firm in Germany doing something similar.
Even the police should know better. What surprises me most is that people are still surprised about this kind of thing. It happens all the time, while the big corruption within the government is ignored - in fact, it's a crime to point it out.
Actually, if you read the linked article, the cartoons contain information that could only be obtained through a leak in the Internal Affairs department of the Renton PD or someone at the Renton PD animating the rumor mill and getting lucky.
They're going the "cyberstalking" angle cause it's the closest thing they have to "some idiot's trolling the police online with stuff from Internal Affairs." Not sure the Cyberstalking law counts for this, but it's likely the most similar legal substitute.
I was paying for Streaming + 2 DVDs. $14.99 a month. Switching to Streaming + 1 DVD is $15.98. I can handle that, but do feel they should offer a bundle discount. Yes, it was a huge hike if you were already Streaming + 1 DVD. I have no real answer for that.
The Studios apparently are demanding a 1200% hike in what Netflix pays them to license their films, so if anyone's to blame, it's ultimately Hollywood. Greedy bastards.
Yes, but this is the Hollywood version. They're getting Michael Bay to direct. It turns out Big Brother is an alien conspiracy, which they solve via pyrotechnics. In 3D and IMAX, Summer 2012.
As a quick aside, there was a LOT more whitespace in that before Slashdot got ahold of it. Turning off the new slow-as-molasses ajax nightmare posting system royally breaks things.
I'm a little concerned about a company that sells electronic media, then on the whim of someone, reaches out and deletes said media from all of its client base. I think I'd wait on any purchase from Amazon...
It wasn't on a whim. Someone uploaded a copyright file to the Kindle Store that they did not have the right to do so with, thinking it was out of copyright. Technically it is out of copyright were the uploader resides (Canada), and should be out of copyright in the US, but that's another discussion entirely, and I think we'd all be preaching to the choir with that one.
At the point they got a legal nastygram about the book, they were required to remove it. Not only that, to protect themselves from being a provider of stolen merchandise -- the closest analogue to what they unwittingly did -- they had to make a good faith effort to resolve the situation. The best way to do this was to send a remote file delete command.
Was it an ideal solution? No. Ideally they would have sent an alert to those who bought the item giving them a few days notice, then deleted the item.
I get them occasionally when my debit card craps out after I buy something off the Kindle store on the Kindle itself, it looks like a book with the title "There has been a problem with a recent purchase", letting you know you need to look at Amazon's account page for more information. They could have sent a similar one, "Urgent Notice Regarding your recent purchase of 1982" with a warning that the file was in fact, illegal, and they had to get rid of it.
I know it's technologically possible -- now, anyway. It might not have been so at that time.
I am under the impression that they made a good faith effort to appease the people who purchased the book, I seem to remember them offering free deadtree versions of the book for anyone who complained, but I might be wrong.
But you do have to understand that Amazon's current business model is completely dependent on making good faith gestures towards the content resellers. If they pissed off a publisher and they said "welp, no more Kindle sales for us, we're going to do our own thing," then Amazon would be in trouble.
This is the same reason Netflix is trying to pass off a huge price hike to it's users. Basically, Hollywood, being the oh so greedy and humble jackasses they are, are trying to push a 1200% license increase onto Netflix for streaming their content -- ultimately, the studios want to make as much as a theater ticket for each and every single person who streams a movie. Netflix can't really fight back, outside of trying to talk some sense into them (good luck with that), so they're just having to adjust and try to not go under before Hollywood gets a clue.
Remember when Dell used to have their own ideas, rather than bouncing around doing the corporate equivalent of "me too!" every 6 months?
Yeah, me neither.
(ObFullDisclosure: I used to work for Dell as a GTS -> Pro Support agent.)
Slashdot Mirror
They won't. To Amazon, your borrowing history is "product" that they can package and sell to advertisers and their own internal teams. It would be like asking them to burn money.
WTF!? With nothing but minimalistic protections such as adblock and noscript I get nothing but I blank page trying to view the linked site. Seriously, what are they trying to pull here?
They're trying to make sure readers don't steal bandwidth by preventing the display of the ads that pay for the site?
You should probably get used to seeing it, websites are doing it more and more often. I'm surprised Slashdot's comments section doesn't die if you block it's advertisement code.
FF12 originally had either Basch (the soldier who gets screwed over before the game) or Balthier (middle aged sky pirate with the furry bunnygirl in a spygirl outfit sidekick -- aka, Han Solo and a disturbingly sexy Chewwie) as the main characters, depending on which version of the story you read. Then the director (Yasumi Matsuno) had a nervous breakdown from working conditions at Square Enix and they replaced him with the guy who did the SaGa games (Akitoshi Kawazu). Around the same time, the "Belts, Belts Everywhere" guy behind Kingdom Hearts started getting more pull at SE and convinced them that no gamer would ever empathize with an old protagonist like the ancient Basch (almost 30) or old man Balthier (mid 20s).
So enter Vaan, who was shoehorned in halfway through development and honestly doesn't belong there. About halfway through the story he just kinda... stops showing up in cutscenes, too. They could have completely cut him and his sister from the game and it wouldn't have affected the story, at all.
Who knows what would have happened if Matsuno hadn't been quite literally driven mad by Square Enix's internal culture or if Nomura had been regulated to drawing belt and zipper slash fics.
... the Eldar Scrolls and Bethesda ...
wow Bethesda infringes on Tolkien now?!?!?!?!?!??!
And those shameless pricks talk about an indie company stealing from them?
God Darnit, I always do that. Too much time painting Warhammer 40k stuff.
Mojang founder Notch had offered to settle the dispute with a friendly game of Quake 3, but apparently Bethesda wasn't up for that."
Yes, because he is an idiot.
Not at all. This is equal parts a legal battle and a PR battle.
Minecraft has a significant amount of credibility. It is a beloved name, and has a lot of goodwill.
And so do the Eldar Scrolls and Bethesda.
By making his claim, he was giving them an out to retain some face, and reinforced his persona of the gamer everydude gone successful.
By refusing it, Bethesda comes across as a soulless corporate entity.
But lets not forget the major problem with this whole mess. Bethesda is claiming the ownership of the concept of Scrolls in video games. This is something that has a laughable amount of prior history, and should be laughed out of court. SHOULD being the key words here.
FF11 and FF14 never seemed like they were FF games in the first place, so they didn't tarnish my perception of the brand, at least as far as I'm aware. On the other hand, FFX, FFX-2, FF12, and FF13...
FF10 was ok. FFX-2 was amazing. If you took the story tongue in cheek (like it was clearly meant to be), the battle engine and gameplay was just plain fun.
FF12 was a bit too politically heavy, but it was fun having what amounted to a FF Sandbox game.
FF13 was just shit, however. Interesting battle system, but the current executives at Square Enix must have a VERY low opinion of gamers to think that they had to dumb the rest of the game down to that level.
I'm worried that the same stupidity has their hands on Dragon Quest 10, which apparently is going to have online features similar to Demons's Souls / Monster Hunter / PSO. Not a MMO (but try telling that to the idiots in the gaming journalism industry) but just enough online capabilities to be interesting. Still, kinda worried. They are letting the idiot who did Nier have a crack at working with Yuji Hoori, and that's just a bad idea.
FTA: "Scale is too strong to use on a living animal"
Yeah, I thought the same thing. It'd be kind of cool to see a transparent mouse. (If also disturbing.)
To say nothing about what would happen if the next Lady Gaga got ahold of this stuff.
Still, it's an interesting development. Wonder if they can replicate the effect with something more conductive to living tissue. I'm thinking Transparent Eyes, or tough wooden windows that are much less likely to be broken into. Or for the truly green out there, a solid wood computer monitor.
If this is Viral Marketing, they owe Jason Chen a very, VERY big apology and probably a rather hefty settlement check,
Interesting claim. I take it since this is on video, the resultant clip is on Youtube or something? Can you point it out to me, or is this just another "I heard he fucks goats" style Political FUD attack?
But this document does raise the question... can WikiLeaks or other leak sites be "selective" in their leaks?
Hilariously, the biggest complaint about them a few months back when the US was doing everything in it's power (and more than a few illegal things, see also: Julian Assange, "kangaroo court") to silence them was that they weren't being selective in their leaks.
Or worse still, they weren't letting the US government do the selecting.
ok so - why would they want to do this again - especially when Square didn't give them that authority..
The coupon was for a digital download of the game via OnLive, or something similar -- Gamestop has a vested interest in killing off and preventing the rise of digital distribution.
True. Unfortunately, they're selling these at Around a $100-$200 loss on each model sold.
Perhaps in 5 years the Touchpad could be profitable at $100-150. But not today.
Fair enough. But my point was that "leaking" reports of corruption to the public is considered a crime. Funny how that works. And not 'haha funny'.
And if the reports turn out to be false? If they're fake reports being used as part of a sting? If the person being investigated is being pressured to turn states' evidence on other, more serious issues of corruption?
Sometimes keeping a cap on the rumor mill is a good thing.
Except that it isn't common usage.
Do you install a Windows onto your computer when you install the Linux OS?
Windows as it pertains to a software program is not common usage.
If I ask my parents, my coworkers, and even some of the people at my school? Yes, they are interested in hearing about this "Windows Linux" that I keep talking about.
Just like how a lot of my friends are interested in trying out "Windows Chrome" cause it might be better than "Windows Explorer".
Exactly! this is like Apple suing for someone who used the word 'case" because they sell a case for the iPod. Nobody calls it "Elder scrolls" and even in their own marketing it has been Oblivion, Morrowind, etc.
While I hope the guy tells them where to jump sadly in this country justice is for the rich and they could crush the poor bastard like a bug by tying his ass up in court for a decade so he'll probably have to cave.
More like Apple suing someone for using the word Apple, or the word Pod. Say what you will, someone selling an "Apple PC" or a "ePod Music Player" would probably be looked at with a raised eyebrow in the US.
"Today, I got a 15 page letter from some Swedish lawyer firm, saying they demand us to stop using the name Scrolls, that they will sue us (and have already paid the fee to the Swedish court), and that they demand a pile of money up front before the legal process has even started."
Forgive me if I'm wrong, but isn't it a standard not-technically-a scam in the EU / UK for legal departments to file on behalf of customers they don't actually represent, requesting legal fees and the like? Something to do with how the courts (particularly the trademark system) works over there? I seem to remember many, many, MANY moons ago a discussion on Slashdot about some legal firm in Germany doing something similar.
That's because that's not the right URL for the parody. This is: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oHg5SJYRHA0 (yes, it's a rickroll) Captcha: Not found
Even the police should know better. What surprises me most is that people are still surprised about this kind of thing. It happens all the time, while the big corruption within the government is ignored - in fact, it's a crime to point it out.
Actually, if you read the linked article, the cartoons contain information that could only be obtained through a leak in the Internal Affairs department of the Renton PD or someone at the Renton PD animating the rumor mill and getting lucky. They're going the "cyberstalking" angle cause it's the closest thing they have to "some idiot's trolling the police online with stuff from Internal Affairs." Not sure the Cyberstalking law counts for this, but it's likely the most similar legal substitute.
I was paying for Streaming + 2 DVDs. $14.99 a month. Switching to Streaming + 1 DVD is $15.98. I can handle that, but do feel they should offer a bundle discount. Yes, it was a huge hike if you were already Streaming + 1 DVD. I have no real answer for that.
The Studios apparently are demanding a 1200% hike in what Netflix pays them to license their films, so if anyone's to blame, it's ultimately Hollywood. Greedy bastards.
1982? The little known prequel? ;-)
Yes, but this is the Hollywood version. They're getting Michael Bay to direct. It turns out Big Brother is an alien conspiracy, which they solve via pyrotechnics. In 3D and IMAX, Summer 2012.
As a quick aside, there was a LOT more whitespace in that before Slashdot got ahold of it. Turning off the new slow-as-molasses ajax nightmare posting system royally breaks things.
I'm a little concerned about a company that sells electronic media, then on the whim of someone, reaches out and deletes said media from all of its client base. I think I'd wait on any purchase from Amazon...
It wasn't on a whim. Someone uploaded a copyright file to the Kindle Store that they did not have the right to do so with, thinking it was out of copyright. Technically it is out of copyright were the uploader resides (Canada), and should be out of copyright in the US, but that's another discussion entirely, and I think we'd all be preaching to the choir with that one. At the point they got a legal nastygram about the book, they were required to remove it. Not only that, to protect themselves from being a provider of stolen merchandise -- the closest analogue to what they unwittingly did -- they had to make a good faith effort to resolve the situation. The best way to do this was to send a remote file delete command. Was it an ideal solution? No. Ideally they would have sent an alert to those who bought the item giving them a few days notice, then deleted the item. I get them occasionally when my debit card craps out after I buy something off the Kindle store on the Kindle itself, it looks like a book with the title "There has been a problem with a recent purchase", letting you know you need to look at Amazon's account page for more information. They could have sent a similar one, "Urgent Notice Regarding your recent purchase of 1982" with a warning that the file was in fact, illegal, and they had to get rid of it. I know it's technologically possible -- now, anyway. It might not have been so at that time. I am under the impression that they made a good faith effort to appease the people who purchased the book, I seem to remember them offering free deadtree versions of the book for anyone who complained, but I might be wrong. But you do have to understand that Amazon's current business model is completely dependent on making good faith gestures towards the content resellers. If they pissed off a publisher and they said "welp, no more Kindle sales for us, we're going to do our own thing," then Amazon would be in trouble. This is the same reason Netflix is trying to pass off a huge price hike to it's users. Basically, Hollywood, being the oh so greedy and humble jackasses they are, are trying to push a 1200% license increase onto Netflix for streaming their content -- ultimately, the studios want to make as much as a theater ticket for each and every single person who streams a movie. Netflix can't really fight back, outside of trying to talk some sense into them (good luck with that), so they're just having to adjust and try to not go under before Hollywood gets a clue.
Don't be dense. This is Lulzsec. They're just calling themselves Anonymous to get some form of protection.
It's not Facebook. People trust Google. It will be a success.
Remember when Dell used to have their own ideas, rather than bouncing around doing the corporate equivalent of "me too!" every 6 months? Yeah, me neither. (ObFullDisclosure: I used to work for Dell as a GTS -> Pro Support agent.)