could interpret "does not condone the selling of accounts in any way, we will also not attempt to discourage it." and "will not help to resolve, in any way, problems that arise from the selling or trading of accounts." as "... has developed a system for trading, selling and exchanging the Account Items both in-game and out-of-game.
To any reasonable person, stating that you -won't- have anything to do with an action is about as far from establishing a system to perform that action as one can get.
The -only- possible claim that I can see is that Mythic has said they won't attempt to discourage the sales of accounts...and yet they seem to be doing just that (as well as trying to block sales of items). A poor choice of words in their policy, to say the least.
As an employee of another MMORPG, I can assure you that if the court decides that the company has no right to protect their game from these types of profiteers, I'll be recommending that we put them out of business by selling in-game items for real-world cash at a rate lower than they can afford to compete with. Of course, it won't take but a few weeks before those in-game items will lose all in-game value...but them's the breaks when you hand over control to people who have no reason to care about the game's integrity or longevity.
"The market" doesn't work (or not work) because people raise (or don't raise) a stink over things they disagree with...you must thinking of Public Relations and the Press industry. "The market" works when you nothing more than simply refuse to enter into a transaction if you don't like the terms, and when you -do- buy the things you believe worth the cost (Note: cost -includes- things like restrictions in the license agreement).
The only real argument over this license is whether or not they are required to refund the purchase price if, after reading the license, you decide you do not wish to agree. And I'd expect Borland to do so, even if the retailer won't (even MS has done so in the past).
Worse than that...it was powdered aluminum + iron, nowadays known as thermite.
What really surprised me about it is that the company tried so hard to cover it up. They were already considered at fault, but thought it would be better to take the heat for using hydrogen (a known danger) than to explain that they'd been done in by a previously unknown chemical interaction.::shrug::
I don't know that it's so amazing... we've got Oracle on an NT4 box at work that has run without a crash (and only two shutdowns for datacenter ops) for just under 4 years. Its longest stretch without a shutdown on it was over 2 years. Our best time on a Linux box is measured in weeks...and it's -always- been a crash, not a shutdown.
As much bitching as I see here on slashdot, Oracle on NT is exceedingly stable (as long as you're not doing anything else on the machine).
If I were to take a harsh stance, I'd say that he's purposely twisting things...but I prefer to be generous and think that he's just careless or sloppy (or somewhat lacking in reading ability).
Kopel says, "H.R. 46 would expand federal forfeiture law to include various computer crimes, and allow the forfeiture of any personal property used "to commit or to facilitate the commission of such violation." So the federal government could seize every computer you own, before you have even been charged -- let alone convicted -- of a computer crime."
Yet, the amendment itself reads, "The court, in imposing sentence on any person convicted of a violation of this section, shall order, in addition to any other sentence imposed and irrespective of any provision of State law, that such person forfeit to the United States-..."
I have yet to see a sentence passed by the court before a conviction, much less before charges have been filed. Given such a blatant mistake, I'm less than willing to accept any claims he makes about what this bill says.
I hope NVidia will continue to advance the industry at the same rate as they did in the past. Without 3dfx as competition, their incentive may not be so great as it was before...
Out of curiousity, why? The 3d graphics cards are already 2+ years ahead of the software (even in games, which are typically leading the pack). I just recently upgraded from one of the original TNT's which up to the last 4-5 months had -no- problems keeping up with any game. Slowing down a little isn't going to hurt significantly, and it -will- give the software developers an environment that is just a bit more stable. A more stable environment for devs could easily translate into software that isn't focused on pure eye-candy, or at least not quite as much as they currently tend to be.
I, for one, will heartily applaud anything that encourages devs to develop -content- as opposed to eye-candy.
Online gaming in one sense probably -is- more fraud prone than merchandise sales, i.e. in the sense that our customer base is of a significantly lower average maturity than a book store's. OTOH, the fact that our customers want to play for more than one month, means that they -must- come up with a reliable means of payment, fraud isn't repeatable on any long-term basis. The balance between those factors is the interesting question. Isn't there anyone else reading here from a "hard" sales e-business that'll cough up some rough estimates of fraud rates?;)
Depending on how the merchant operates, the credit card issuer isn't at risk for all those fees...if they have not pre-authorized the charge (and even now, a large number of merchants don't do so), the issuer will simply not pay the merchant. If the charge gets disputed at a later date, the credit card issuer does -not- take the hit, they charge it back to the merchant. As an example, ever wonder why so many places don't take Amex? Because Amex doesn't require any sort of documentation from the customer, just a verbal statement that it's not their charge. As our average charge is in the $10-$30 range, and the cost of challenging a disputed charge is higher than that, the defrauder wins...once.
I suspect this is a significant factor in why so few e-businesses are in the black. The costs are a -lot- higher than they appear at first glance.
You are right in only one small sense, we -do- get to decide what the laws are...by electing officials who's views we agree with. We most clearly do -not- have the right to simply ignore laws we disagree with.
If you dislike the current IP legislation, by all means, try to find enough like-minded individuals to get your view supported in the legislative branch. Of course, when that happens, don't be surprised to find that the software industry (which can -only- stay in business by writing the code you want to freely take) vanish from this country and find a place where they can stay in business. I know it'd be a cold day in hell before -I- would continue writing code if I had no say in it's distribution.
Citation, as in a publicly released study? No. Evidence in the form of what -we- see at the online game company I work for; some...our fraud rate runs about 18%, but our charges are almost all repeating, monthly charges, and therefore would be expected to be lower than most store-type operations. It's anecdotal evidence (for anyone who doesn't work there, anyway), so you'll have to decide for yourself how reliable it is. For more anecdotal evidence, talking to the folks at PaymentTech (who supply our credit card services), 30% is about average for the industry.
But even Jefferson realized, way back when, before computers or software, that ideas themselves are *unownable*.
Agreed, but...and this is why copyrights are not applied to ideas, but rather to expressions of ideas, such as text or code.
The rest of the money you are paying for an *artificial scarcity*, created by a bunch of people *hoarding ideas*.
This is an utterly absurd claim. All the ideas in the world won't move a pixel on your screen. Software is code...code that involves a lot of work on the part of the people who made it.
Sorry bud, but you have no right to profit off their work, or to even use their work without their permission. You are on the other hand, perfectly free to write your own equivalent...and since its nothing but ideas, this should be a problem for you, should it?
You're apparently missing the point. He sent millions of spam emails out, all spoofed to look like they were coming from IBM. I'd think that expecting IBM to get 50,000 complaints about these letters is a generously low estimate. So, not only has this perp stolen bandwidth and server resources, he's doing significant damage (in terms of time lost cleaning up his mess) to IBM.
Hell yes, this sort of BS deserves jail time. Just like any other thief.
If you weren't planning to sell the game, why wouldn't you want other people to have free access to it? That strikes me as nothing more than selfishness and ignorance(not truly meant to be a flame).
If I spend the time and trouble to program a game, it is my choice whether or not I want to share it with the world, for free or otherwise. Just because I sold it at one point, does not give you the right to take it for free at a later time. If you want a copy of my work badly enough to steal it, then do what I did and write it yourself.
In contrast, online, you can do no physical harm to another human being (short of life critical systems being interfered with).
Actually, you can do substantial harm to another online, physical harm isn't the only form of damage, you know. If I steal your credit card, and anonymously use it on the net for thousands of dollars of purchases, you have been harmed, even if you eventually get it all untangled. If I purchase merchandise from you, and pay with a stolen/fake CC, you still lose the merchandise, although you don't get the money. If I slander you in public sight, your reputation suffers...that is damage as well.
I can certainly see that some parts of the world could benefit from the ability of people to post without repercussion, but make no mistake about it...anonymity (aka lack-of-accountability) is the single biggest factor in the slowness of the "net economy" to improve (a 30% CC fraud rate will do that). And it is directly responsible for so many of the things most of us dislike about the net now (can you say spam, trolls, and flames).
Re:They get attacked because they don't prosecute
on
DoD and Net Attacks
·
· Score: 1
This may be true in the commercial world, but I rather doubt the same reasoning holds true in government circles. Commercial sites rarely have the ability to pursue prosecution, in our current legislative culture. These guys, OTOH, have the clout necessary to see that ISP's -do- give up the logs needed to track and prosecute offenders.
Along with most of the others here, I consider it likely that the numbers the DoD is reporting are considerably inflated by counting miscellaneous (and some unintentional) port scans. BUT, consider how low those numbers might drop if it were common knowledge that scanning DoD computers would lead to prosecution... I suspect that even script-kiddies can be taught that it's better to target someone more forgiving. And the reduction in numbers means you can spend extra time examining those attacks that continue.
>
But the government in Stranger was not choosing who to give the vote to...they were required to accept anyone that wanted to serve. This was even explicitly spelled out by the recruiter.
we open-source advocates are always talking about the virtue of OPEN-SOURCE!!!!!! M$ isn't offering anything for free, they're offering a different fsckin' way to pay for closed-source software. You think we're gonna sit here with our thumbs up our butts goin' "Hip hip hooray for for a new way to pay for buggy, proprietary software!"
I'm amazed that you even care...and suspicious of the fact that you apparently care so much. If open source is going to be so much better, then MS will be gone (or reduced to a minor player) anyway in 10 years. The variety of payment methods they offer won't make a bit of difference, if there are a multitude of clear advantages to someone else's software.
Personally, I expect that nothing much will be different in 10 years... MS (and the other commercial software houses) will still be raking in the money, and open source software will still be little more than the hobbyist's playground.
Let's not forget that even after we've solved the problems associated with manufacturing, and the logistics involved in transporting the materials, we still have to come up with some means of preventing sabotage. We don't want to [attempt to] live through the effects of a 20k+ km cable wrapping around the earth, because somebody smuggled a suitcase nuke on board and cut the anchor free.
Slashdot Mirror
could interpret "does not condone the selling of accounts in any way, we will also not attempt to discourage it." and "will not help to resolve, in any way, problems that arise from the selling or trading of accounts." as "... has developed a system for trading, selling and exchanging the Account Items both in-game and out-of-game.
To any reasonable person, stating that you -won't- have anything to do with an action is about as far from establishing a system to perform that action as one can get.
The -only- possible claim that I can see is that Mythic has said they won't attempt to discourage the sales of accounts...and yet they seem to be doing just that (as well as trying to block sales of items). A poor choice of words in their policy, to say the least.
As an employee of another MMORPG, I can assure you that if the court decides that the company has no right to protect their game from these types of profiteers, I'll be recommending that we put them out of business by selling in-game items for real-world cash at a rate lower than they can afford to compete with. Of course, it won't take but a few weeks before those in-game items will lose all in-game value...but them's the breaks when you hand over control to people who have no reason to care about the game's integrity or longevity.
"The market" doesn't work (or not work) because people raise (or don't raise) a stink over things they disagree with...you must thinking of Public Relations and the Press industry. "The market" works when you nothing more than simply refuse to enter into a transaction if you don't like the terms, and when you -do- buy the things you believe worth the cost (Note: cost -includes- things like restrictions in the license agreement).
The only real argument over this license is whether or not they are required to refund the purchase price if, after reading the license, you decide you do not wish to agree. And I'd expect Borland to do so, even if the retailer won't (even MS has done so in the past).
Worse than that...it was powdered aluminum + iron, nowadays known as thermite.
::shrug::
What really surprised me about it is that the company tried so hard to cover it up. They were already considered at fault, but thought it would be better to take the heat for using hydrogen (a known danger) than to explain that they'd been done in by a previously unknown chemical interaction.
I don't know that it's so amazing... we've got Oracle on an NT4 box at work that has run without a crash (and only two shutdowns for datacenter ops) for just under 4 years. Its longest stretch without a shutdown on it was over 2 years. Our best time on a Linux box is measured in weeks...and it's -always- been a crash, not a shutdown.
As much bitching as I see here on slashdot, Oracle on NT is exceedingly stable (as long as you're not doing anything else on the machine).
Kopel says, "H.R. 46 would expand federal forfeiture law to include various computer crimes, and allow the forfeiture of any personal property used "to commit or to facilitate the commission of such violation." So the federal government could seize every computer you own, before you have even been charged -- let alone convicted -- of a computer crime."
Yet, the amendment itself reads, "The court, in imposing sentence on any person convicted of a violation of this section, shall order, in addition to any other sentence imposed and irrespective of any provision of State law, that such person forfeit to the United States-..."
I have yet to see a sentence passed by the court before a conviction, much less before charges have been filed. Given such a blatant mistake, I'm less than willing to accept any claims he makes about what this bill says.
Out of curiousity, why? The 3d graphics cards are already 2+ years ahead of the software (even in games, which are typically leading the pack). I just recently upgraded from one of the original TNT's which up to the last 4-5 months had -no- problems keeping up with any game. Slowing down a little isn't going to hurt significantly, and it -will- give the software developers an environment that is just a bit more stable. A more stable environment for devs could easily translate into software that isn't focused on pure eye-candy, or at least not quite as much as they currently tend to be.
I, for one, will heartily applaud anything that encourages devs to develop -content- as opposed to eye-candy.
Depending on how the merchant operates, the credit card issuer isn't at risk for all those fees...if they have not pre-authorized the charge (and even now, a large number of merchants don't do so), the issuer will simply not pay the merchant. If the charge gets disputed at a later date, the credit card issuer does -not- take the hit, they charge it back to the merchant. As an example, ever wonder why so many places don't take Amex? Because Amex doesn't require any sort of documentation from the customer, just a verbal statement that it's not their charge. As our average charge is in the $10-$30 range, and the cost of challenging a disputed charge is higher than that, the defrauder wins...once.
I suspect this is a significant factor in why so few e-businesses are in the black. The costs are a -lot- higher than they appear at first glance.
>
You are right in only one small sense, we -do- get to decide what the laws are...by electing officials who's views we agree with. We most clearly do -not- have the right to simply ignore laws we disagree with.
If you dislike the current IP legislation, by all means, try to find enough like-minded individuals to get your view supported in the legislative branch. Of course, when that happens, don't be surprised to find that the software industry (which can -only- stay in business by writing the code you want to freely take) vanish from this country and find a place where they can stay in business. I know it'd be a cold day in hell before -I- would continue writing code if I had no say in it's distribution.
Citation, as in a publicly released study? No. Evidence in the form of what -we- see at the online game company I work for; some...our fraud rate runs about 18%, but our charges are almost all repeating, monthly charges, and therefore would be expected to be lower than most store-type operations. It's anecdotal evidence (for anyone who doesn't work there, anyway), so you'll have to decide for yourself how reliable it is. For more anecdotal evidence, talking to the folks at PaymentTech (who supply our credit card services), 30% is about average for the industry.
Agreed, but...and this is why copyrights are not applied to ideas, but rather to expressions of ideas, such as text or code.
The rest of the money you are paying for an *artificial scarcity*, created by a bunch of people *hoarding ideas*.
This is an utterly absurd claim. All the ideas in the world won't move a pixel on your screen. Software is code...code that involves a lot of work on the part of the people who made it.
Sorry bud, but you have no right to profit off their work, or to even use their work without their permission. You are on the other hand, perfectly free to write your own equivalent...and since its nothing but ideas, this should be a problem for you, should it?
You're apparently missing the point. He sent millions of spam emails out, all spoofed to look like they were coming from IBM. I'd think that expecting IBM to get 50,000 complaints about these letters is a generously low estimate. So, not only has this perp stolen bandwidth and server resources, he's doing significant damage (in terms of time lost cleaning up his mess) to IBM. Hell yes, this sort of BS deserves jail time. Just like any other thief.
Yes...and it's still available at http://store.3do.com/store/pc.html
If I spend the time and trouble to program a game, it is my choice whether or not I want to share it with the world, for free or otherwise. Just because I sold it at one point, does not give you the right to take it for free at a later time. If you want a copy of my work badly enough to steal it, then do what I did and write it yourself.
Actually, you can do substantial harm to another online, physical harm isn't the only form of damage, you know. If I steal your credit card, and anonymously use it on the net for thousands of dollars of purchases, you have been harmed, even if you eventually get it all untangled. If I purchase merchandise from you, and pay with a stolen/fake CC, you still lose the merchandise, although you don't get the money. If I slander you in public sight, your reputation suffers...that is damage as well. I can certainly see that some parts of the world could benefit from the ability of people to post without repercussion, but make no mistake about it...anonymity (aka lack-of-accountability) is the single biggest factor in the slowness of the "net economy" to improve (a 30% CC fraud rate will do that). And it is directly responsible for so many of the things most of us dislike about the net now (can you say spam, trolls, and flames).
Along with most of the others here, I consider it likely that the numbers the DoD is reporting are considerably inflated by counting miscellaneous (and some unintentional) port scans. BUT, consider how low those numbers might drop if it were common knowledge that scanning DoD computers would lead to prosecution... I suspect that even script-kiddies can be taught that it's better to target someone more forgiving. And the reduction in numbers means you can spend extra time examining those attacks that continue.
> But the government in Stranger was not choosing who to give the vote to...they were required to accept anyone that wanted to serve. This was even explicitly spelled out by the recruiter.
we open-source advocates are always talking about the virtue of OPEN-SOURCE!!!!!! M$ isn't offering anything for free, they're offering a different fsckin' way to pay for closed-source software. You think we're gonna sit here with our thumbs up our butts goin' "Hip hip hooray for for a new way to pay for buggy, proprietary software!" I'm amazed that you even care...and suspicious of the fact that you apparently care so much. If open source is going to be so much better, then MS will be gone (or reduced to a minor player) anyway in 10 years. The variety of payment methods they offer won't make a bit of difference, if there are a multitude of clear advantages to someone else's software. Personally, I expect that nothing much will be different in 10 years... MS (and the other commercial software houses) will still be raking in the money, and open source software will still be little more than the hobbyist's playground.
Let's not forget that even after we've solved the problems associated with manufacturing, and the logistics involved in transporting the materials, we still have to come up with some means of preventing sabotage. We don't want to [attempt to] live through the effects of a 20k+ km cable wrapping around the earth, because somebody smuggled a suitcase nuke on board and cut the anchor free.