And you don't think that if there was a major example of forbidding anyone entrance to a store based on any appearances that laws wouldn't pop up?
You're right that it's perfectly legal to do that - but it's immoral. If you try to claim that it's not, I'll argue with you till the day I die. The laws of the country just haven't caught up there yet. (It should also be noted that again, police will probably side with the customer if the customer is polite and points out that he's not doing anything illegal, and honestly, if the store wants to check his bag on the way out, go ahead and let them - just say that the managers were the ones who started harassing him - which would be true).
Look, the whole reason I posted the response was because people were trying to say it's "OK". It's not OK. It's legal. At best, it's "morally ambiguous" - it's a very very slippery slope, and one that is really best steered far clear from.
No - the no-bags rule applies to everybody with bags. Those who tend to carry bags are inconvenienced more than those who tend to not carry bags (actually, I'm one of the latter).
See, the problem is that the "if you don't like the store's policies, don't shop there" is a very slippery slope. You could've made the same justification in the 1950s for the stores that said "No Blacks Allowed," or the stores that had Whites Only and Blacks Only sections - if you don't like there, don't go there. But if you're trying to justify that behavior, I'd be surprised.
I will accept health concerns for a valid reason for restricting freedoms - smoking, pets, and needed clothing (no shirt, no service, etc.) but nothing else. For me I draw a VERY strict line as to what is OK, and what is impinging on a freedom they shouldn't be touching.
It's touchy, of course, because people tend to "like" laissez-faire capitalism. But unfortunately, that kind of thought process will only work if the people in charge of the businesses are rational thinking human beings who only care about maximizing their profits - which, studies show, is not the case. So you've gotta have some controls, and one of the most important controls, in my opinion, is to cut down on the ego of the stores in saying who they will and won't allow in.
If the stores are worried about theft, put more security cameras up, or do better with security tags. There are other solutions than restricting personal freedoms.
And, yes, I do agree this is offtopic - somewhat. The bnetd issue vs. Blizzard honestly is a very good example of when business thinks it has the right to create its own country, with its own ethics - it doesn't. You can't put up an agreement in front of people, say "Sign This!" and then laugh as you point out they just signed their rights away. It doesn't work like that. There are some rights you CAN'T have someone sign away. (And, in addition, there are people who can't sign contracts - hence the completely ridiculous nature of shrink-wrap licenses)
Really? What about when they ban trenchcoat-wearing people from a store, because a couple of people in a trenchcoat stole books? How is this different? Bags might be justifiable in your mind, but justification is in the eye of the beholder, and may change over time. If it ever comes to a time where the situation I described above is considered normal, I'll jump country. That's why it's a bad idea to consider it "OK" to ban anyone from anyplace because of anything except their actions - and YES, that includes things like allowing people to take bags into stores. The road of giving up freedom for safety is a very very slippery slope.
You're asking people to give up a right that you have no legal right to ask them to give up - carrying something which they legally own. Yah, there's a reason for it, and some people might voluntarily do it, but you can't force it upon people - honestly, you can't.
Going into a store like any other person is not a "privilege" - it's a right, because you have a right to live and be treated like other people. If you're being singled out because of anything except your actions, it's discrimination. Claiming it's not is just blinding yourself. Stores can't just arbitrarily ban people from stores, nor can they kick people out if they're not doing anything suspicious or illegal - if anyone ever tries to do this to you, it's a very good thing to remind them of this.
I do wonder if anyone has pressed a store to try to call the police when they've been told not to come in for carrying a bag - if the person is polite, and non-aggressive, the cop will most likely side with the customer (if not the cop, a judge will:) ).
The library thing is totally different - they're providing a free service, which is a privilege. I'm pretty sure you could probably argue the "not allowing drinks" thing as well - after all, all you'd have to say is "well, if I spill it on a book, I'll pay for it to be replaced."
And while you may feel safe, I will always prefer to feel free over feeling safe. "Those who give up freedom for safety deserve neither."
I wonder if tunneling Ethernet under TCP is also against their license agreement (yes, you can do this, and it's cool.:) )
I also wonder if they'll constantly update their license agreement to keep up with new technologies. What about tunneling IPX over avian carrier? It may produce long latencies, but it might still be viable gaming.:)
Morons. Why don't they just work WITH the people to create a vibrant, alive community rather than trying to kill off any innovation outside of their own company (illegally, mind you).
Not to mention the fact that their license agreement can bite me. I hope people do realize eventually that there are some rights you can't get people to sign away - like their right to do reasonable things with things they BUY. Grr.
I agree with you on the WC3 issue as well. I really want to play WC3. But I won't buy it, not with the crap that they're pulling.
You've also got the two Ask Slashdots - the one re: the toilets (maybe that was real?) and definitely the one re: sexual performance. Though, granted, since a reader sent that in (assumedly), technically Slashdot editors only did do the one.
I definitely agree with you, though. Slashdot did what it was supposed to do. April Fool is actually a slow news day quite often (the dollar in Canada went down today because financial people believed an April Fool's joke!) and somehow I doubt that Slashdot actually ignored REAL news (the IP replacing Avian Carriers thing is real, as was the InfoSec defense training, and the MSNBC Games People Shouldn't Play)
You've got a very limited idea of "news" sites, then, at least IMHO. Most of the news sites I've passed today had a few April Fool's jokes. It should also be noted that the ONLY jokes that Slashdot created were the "Slashvertisements" which actually did take me a (split second) to realize that it was an April Fool's joke, and the two Ask Slashdots (the first one I'm still not sure about - maybe it was serious? ).
All of the other ones were propagated from OTHER sites. Tom's Hardware, Stepwise, the LKML, Google (!), The Register - all Slashdot did was report them. Whether or not you consider them news sources, I do.
Don't blame Slashdot. Slashdot doesn't create much news or research much news - it's a summary site - it grabs content from OTHER sites, in general. Lots of IT/geek sites had April Fool's jokes today, so, by extension, so did Slashdot.
Then maybe you might actually want to go after the people who promulgate that hack, rather than after bnetd, which is completely legal.:)
That said, it will completely suck if Blizzard doesn't provide remote access to the keyserver - then they're really just holding a monopoly (battle.net servers) and refusing to let anyone else play.
If you want a good example of how life SHOULD be, take a look at what Bungie did with Myth II's server - they open sourced it when they decided to take it offline. I'm not saying that Blizzard wouldn't do the same - it's just looking very likely that they won't (they'll just remove WC2 support from the next battle.net setup, and poof, we're all out of luck...)
The idea would be that the client needs the return key to actually activate and play the game. Without the return key, the game wouldn't play. bnetd wouldn't handle the authentication portion of it at all.
Yes, what I'm suggesting is kindof something like Windows Product Activation - I'm not suggesting this is a good thing. What I'm suggesting is that if they're this paranoid about piracy, they are much more stringent restrictions they can allow.
Again, this is all a moot point, as they really only care about charging for battle.net. The funny thing is that even if they win against bnetd here (which they won't) as soon as they start charging, bnetd could start again, as battle.net servers are then a monetary resource, and Blizzard would be holding an illegal monopoly.
A: That only works on Blizzard games which have the TCP/IP option, which isn't true for all of them.
B: That's not a game server - that's connecting to play with friends. Blizzard provided a functionality for playing with a game server - they can't restrict it and say "uh, no, only ours." I could give reams of reasons why this is valid, but I only need to give one. It's fair use.
That's true - it wouldn't be hard to do that. It would also be illegal, and they could then go after those people. If this ever goes to trial (which it won't, as a judge would throw it out in a heartbeat) that point would be brought up, and I think a judge would find it hard to argue with that.
You're right about not hacking the server, though - the clients could just communicate with a keyserver completely separate from the bnetd protocol completely - oh wait. That would be intelligent.:)
Blizzard's FAQ on their site unfortunately makes me believe that they do know, though I think they're mainly just being told what their lawyers tell them.
What I'd LIKE to point out to them is that there are several solutions (hello! math!) where they can guarantee that only legal copies are being used on battle.net, and provide an easy way for bnetd to prevent illegal copies there as well.
(Someone correct me if I'm wrong. I'm aware hackers could work around this, but it would take a lot of effort, and they'd have to hack both bnetd and their own client, so then it's not so easy)
You could easily give the CD-KEY to a blizzard keychecking server, which then not only figures out if the key is correct, but then generates a unique number, which, when hashed together with the original CD-KEY on the client, activates the product. Blizzard then forwards the result back to the bnetd server, and the bnetd server passes it back to the client. If it's incorrect, the client doesn't run (here's the key - the CLIENT doesn't run, not the server doesn't allow the client. The DMCA prevents you from bypassing something designed to prevent CLIENT copying, on the CLIENT).
You could hack around this, by altering both the bnetd server, and hacking the client to do it as well, but that's complicated and then Blizzard could go after people who are distributing the hacks that do that, rather than bnetd, because THAT would be clearly illegal.
This is better than a simple blind "accept/reject" system because it requires that any battle.net server has to communicate with Blizzard (or figure out the algorithm behind the Battle.net check/second key generation, which can be made quite difficult) and Blizzard guarantees that things are OK.
VHS is going away - that's the problem. I'd be glad to stick with VHS in a van while traveling, for instance, but I've got a feeling that in a while they won't exist anymore. That and why should I have to buy two copies of a movie to watch it in a home theatre and in a van while traveling? I own the bloody thing. I can watch it wherever I want. That's all I'm asking for.
And for God's sake, who the HELL said anything about ruining your experience? I didn't. All I'm saying is that pan and scan should exist ALONGSIDE widescreen - that is, you should be able to choose between them with a simple push of a button. God. It's insane the number of people that defend widescreen/letterbox with a bloody vengeance when all you do is suggest that "um, you know, P&S has a REASON for existing..."
(Thank you, also, for telling me what I will like and not like, but next time, you might want to realize that you're being very egotistical and self-centered - the Universe does not revolve around you, and the phrase "you won't like..." should never be used in any sort of discussion.)
Once more. Don't want all movies in Pan and Scan. Want movies in BOTH Pan and Scan AND widescreen. You can have your widescreen. I can watch movies in a location where the TV is not the center of attention without a telescope. Everyone's happy. Why am I getting so much argument about a solution where everyone's happy?
That's the stupidest comment I've ever heard in my life.
27" is a large TV. Try to carry it, or move it. More importantly, measure what percentage of your living room wall it takes up. It's huge. It's garish. Some of us actually ENJOY having a living room that the TV is not the center of attention.
A 13" TV is a decent sized TV - it's a good size to place in a bedroom, for instance. And did you ever think that you might want to watch movies while in bed with someone? In that case, I'd actually like to be able to SEE the movie.
DVDs are not only for audio/videophiles. They're becoming the de facto movie standard, and as such, they have to appeal to EVERYONE, not just a select group of people that have a very audio/video-centric way of life.
The funny thing is, if they want to say that the beta is their true reason for doing this, bnetd doesn't even support WC3 right now.
Blizzard can't possibly claim that battle.net cd-key checking is a copy protection method: it doesn't stop the copies from being made, or even from working (they DO work) - just prevents copies (actually, 'certain reported CD-keys' - so it could actually be used to ban individual people for no reason, even though Blizzard hasn't done this - yet) from working with their servers.
I have no idea why Blizzard is doing this, or why they haven't noticed that Vivendi's lawyers are monkeys (see my other post - that letter is real big crap, and they misinterpreted the USC 512 code they quoted). Vivendi's throwing money away, when Blizzard should be working with bnetd to try to fix this. If they really want to save money and stop piracy (rather than just charge for battle.net at a later time, which is what they REALLY want to do) they'd be doing that, which is what id software and every other game manufacturer in the world with online play has done.
Did anyone notice how INCREDIBLY unprofessional the letter from Blizzard/Vivendi was? Seriously, it basically amounted to "nope, we're right, you're wrong, post the software and we'll send Blizzard cops to go arrest you!" Then, I cracked up when I saw the EFF letter, which politely begins "Um, I hope this is going to the right place, considering you didn't have a return address...."
Vivendi didn't address ANY of their claims, specifically the point that 1201(c) and 1201(f) clearly ALLOW software such as bnetd (they might as well have specifically given this as an example of what the DMCA does NOT prevent) - just saying "no, you suck, go away." They also misinterpreted 17 U.S.C. it looks like, thinking that bnetd only had 10 business days to respond or they can't file a counter notification, whereas the statute is saying that the offending material can't be redistributed in less than 10 days after sending a counter notification.
Vivendi's actions are going to look really bad from a court's perspective - they're being very aggressive and holding their cards all to their chest, so if they do sue, and try to pull some trick, a judge isn't going to be very lenient.
I am very glad that the EFF is handling this, though - it would've been very difficult, if not impossible, for bnetd to handle it themselves.
I didn't say onscreen cues: the cues would be for the DVD player to move the image left and right. To the viewer, it would be identical to a pan and scan version.
And the pan & scan version is overseen by the director in most cases, so it's not like he didn't have a hand in it. In a lot of cases, the extra information isn't that important to the film, so it can be left out (it usually provides the 'immersive experience' you get with having a 30-foot movie screen - on a TV, that's not that helpful). Most of the time in widescreen all you're seeing is a couple extra trees, or a couple of extras walking around.
I'm not saying that widescreen's useless. I'm saying that it's not the only way to watch a movie, and really, there are benefits to a pan & scan approach (physical resolution being the main one) - if I can't make out the entire movie, what's the point of watching it?
It's not a concept of field of view, it's a concept of focus, which is far more limited than 90 degrees - something 45 degrees off the center of vision is going to be slightly out of focus, which your brain will notice. Movement draws the eye, upon which point you focus on the object which moved.
I just did an experiment - take a book (~16:9 aspect ratio, a little less wide for most standard books) and hold it on its side. Stare at the center. Now try to read WITHOUT moving your eye anything over to the side of the book. It's out of focus. If you try to read it, your eyes jump there. If you had two things at opposite ends of the book drawing your eye, it'd jump back and forth.
Widescreen is better because it includes more information that the eye would SEE naturally, yes, but if you put two important things that are going to draw the eye on either side of the screen, your eyes are going to be jumping back and forth.
YAY! Has anyone seen this actually work? My only problem is that I've never seen a DVD with a feature like this actually work, so you can tell my skepticism...
As I said before, scenes like that are not good scenes, quite frankly - you're putting two focal points of the action at opposite ends of the picture, so in the audience, your eyes are switching back and forth just like the pan and scan is doing.
I, however, don't think it's distracting, just for that reason - my eyes are doing the same thing the pan and scan is (my response to that would be - well, you shouldn't've filmed the thing that close and put focal points at opposite edges of the film).
Note that I'm not saying that pan and scan is better than widescreen. It's not - having a display that's at the same resolution and aspect ratio as the film would be the ideal situation. But in some cases, people would want pan & scan (those with small televisions, for instance) and in some cases, you'd want widescreen (people who want to see the movie as it was originally). There's nothing wrong with either point.
Except all the DVDs I've ever seen are almost always in widescreen only, with no option to shift to pan and scan. Am I missing something? Is there SUPPOSED to be a way to shift a DVD that lists itself as "widescreen version" into a pan & scan? This is kinda what I'm trying to say: there's no reason you couldn't have letterbox, pan and scan, true widescreen, and purple elephant mode on the same DVD, with the same image stream, as it's all digital, and it's just an image conversion.
Try looking at a widescreen movie on a 13" TV from more than 2 inches away and you'll understand the problem. Trying to say "well, everyone should have a 35" TV or better" is stupid - I own a 27" TV, but I understand when people say that they only want a small TV, because large TVs are intrusive and garish.
Look, I'm not talking about it from a filmmaker's perspective. I'm talking about simply displaying only a portion of the stream, and scrolling left and right as necessary. Would it suck? Yes. But who cares? You can switch back and forth between the widescreen and this Pan & Scan all you want.
I once again say: if you put a 16:9 image on a 4:3 set with bars, you're decreasing the (real, physical: pixels per inch) resolution on the vertical axis on 100% of the film. I'd rather have a director choose which portion of the film is meaningless rather than trying to stare fruitlessly at the film and say "wait: what did that just say? I can't make it out, it's too small."
As for the HDTV thing, honestly - HDTV may or may not be the standard in 2006. My guess is no - government and industries don't mandate standards - people really do. If people say "no, I don't want to replace my TV" people will cater to them. It will happen that way.
Most DVD players that are based on computer DVD-ROMs do have zoom. Any Apex series DVD player does, and basically all of the "work alikes" of it do - basically anything that advertises that it plays MP3s as well.
With a 2.35:1 movie, you could just 'zoom' in an additional step, and pan & scan more. Would it suck? Yes. But who cares? It's a stream of instructions, rather than an MPEG-2 stream, so it doesn't cost you much at all (besides the person-time to do it).
I mean, come on. The stream's digital, it has a native resolution, and it wants to display it on a foreign resolution system. Their answer is always to display that native resolution onto the foreign resolution system by simply having no information in the 'extra' portion of the screen that doesn't meet their aspect ratio. This is dumb - you could also have the player only play a portion of the stream and not output the portion that is 'off' screen, and there's NO reason that the portion of the stream that's being displayed can't be controlled via an additional data set on the DVD. You don't lose resolution anywhere, everyone's happy, no problems (and it's aficionados, not affectionados).
Honestly, it all comes down to just "you have data, it's this resolution, this aspect ratio. how do you want to display it?" There's no reason you can't have the DVD player showing it full-screen, but only a portion of the frame, and shifting left and right as need be. If there are portions that in the pan and scan that use the full frame portion, you can store the full frame stream in the MPEG stream, and have the 16:9 display only display a portion of the full frame. If there are portions in the MPEG stream where the full frame doesn't exist because of CG, then fine, strip the full frame in the MPEG stream, and have the Pan & Scan zoom in. There, you'd lose a bit of resolution, but it's only for the people doing pan and scan, and DVD MPEG resolution's higher than TV anyway, so it's no big harm.
Ah HA! So I was right!:) (note that I said anamorphic widescreen is 'roughly' 1.8 - which is 1.77 rounded:) )
I don't see why everyone is always so perfectly fine with black bars at the top and bottom of the screen. They're not 'okay', they're a pain, and I would rather have a director/editor choosing what's important to the film and what's not rather than blandly scrapping information from the whole film in general.
No, instead, you're junking all of the film by compressing its vertical resolution. As much as I love squinting, I think I'll deal with losing a portion of the film that an editor and the director thought were useless, and be happy seeing ALL of an actor's face, and being able to read text on screen without an ungodly expensive TV.
Pan & scan isn't that bad, you know, and widescreen TV's aren't that good an idea: they're very unwieldy, and they really only look good when they're BIG. A small widescreen TV would just look comical.
Slashdot Mirror
And you don't think that if there was a major example of forbidding anyone entrance to a store based on any appearances that laws wouldn't pop up?
You're right that it's perfectly legal to do that - but it's immoral. If you try to claim that it's not, I'll argue with you till the day I die. The laws of the country just haven't caught up there yet. (It should also be noted that again, police will probably side with the customer if the customer is polite and points out that he's not doing anything illegal, and honestly, if the store wants to check his bag on the way out, go ahead and let them - just say that the managers were the ones who started harassing him - which would be true).
Look, the whole reason I posted the response was because people were trying to say it's "OK". It's not OK. It's legal. At best, it's "morally ambiguous" - it's a very very slippery slope, and one that is really best steered far clear from.
No - the no-bags rule applies to everybody with bags. Those who tend to carry bags are inconvenienced more than those who tend to not carry bags (actually, I'm one of the latter).
See, the problem is that the "if you don't like the store's policies, don't shop there" is a very slippery slope. You could've made the same justification in the 1950s for the stores that said "No Blacks Allowed," or the stores that had Whites Only and Blacks Only sections - if you don't like there, don't go there. But if you're trying to justify that behavior, I'd be surprised.
I will accept health concerns for a valid reason for restricting freedoms - smoking, pets, and needed clothing (no shirt, no service, etc.) but nothing else. For me I draw a VERY strict line as to what is OK, and what is impinging on a freedom they shouldn't be touching.
It's touchy, of course, because people tend to "like" laissez-faire capitalism. But unfortunately, that kind of thought process will only work if the people in charge of the businesses are rational thinking human beings who only care about maximizing their profits - which, studies show, is not the case. So you've gotta have some controls, and one of the most important controls, in my opinion, is to cut down on the ego of the stores in saying who they will and won't allow in.
If the stores are worried about theft, put more security cameras up, or do better with security tags. There are other solutions than restricting personal freedoms.
And, yes, I do agree this is offtopic - somewhat. The bnetd issue vs. Blizzard honestly is a very good example of when business thinks it has the right to create its own country, with its own ethics - it doesn't. You can't put up an agreement in front of people, say "Sign This!" and then laugh as you point out they just signed their rights away. It doesn't work like that. There are some rights you CAN'T have someone sign away. (And, in addition, there are people who can't sign contracts - hence the completely ridiculous nature of shrink-wrap licenses)
Really? What about when they ban trenchcoat-wearing people from a store, because a couple of people in a trenchcoat stole books? How is this different? Bags might be justifiable in your mind, but justification is in the eye of the beholder, and may change over time. If it ever comes to a time where the situation I described above is considered normal, I'll jump country. That's why it's a bad idea to consider it "OK" to ban anyone from anyplace because of anything except their actions - and YES, that includes things like allowing people to take bags into stores. The road of giving up freedom for safety is a very very slippery slope.
:) ).
You're asking people to give up a right that you have no legal right to ask them to give up - carrying something which they legally own. Yah, there's a reason for it, and some people might voluntarily do it, but you can't force it upon people - honestly, you can't.
Going into a store like any other person is not a "privilege" - it's a right, because you have a right to live and be treated like other people. If you're being singled out because of anything except your actions, it's discrimination. Claiming it's not is just blinding yourself. Stores can't just arbitrarily ban people from stores, nor can they kick people out if they're not doing anything suspicious or illegal - if anyone ever tries to do this to you, it's a very good thing to remind them of this.
I do wonder if anyone has pressed a store to try to call the police when they've been told not to come in for carrying a bag - if the person is polite, and non-aggressive, the cop will most likely side with the customer (if not the cop, a judge will
The library thing is totally different - they're providing a free service, which is a privilege. I'm pretty sure you could probably argue the "not allowing drinks" thing as well - after all, all you'd have to say is "well, if I spill it on a book, I'll pay for it to be replaced."
And while you may feel safe, I will always prefer to feel free over feeling safe. "Those who give up freedom for safety deserve neither."
I wonder if tunneling Ethernet under TCP is also against their license agreement (yes, you can do this, and it's cool. :) )
:)
I also wonder if they'll constantly update their license agreement to keep up with new technologies. What about tunneling IPX over avian carrier? It may produce long latencies, but it might still be viable gaming.
Morons. Why don't they just work WITH the people to create a vibrant, alive community rather than trying to kill off any innovation outside of their own company (illegally, mind you).
Not to mention the fact that their license agreement can bite me. I hope people do realize eventually that there are some rights you can't get people to sign away - like their right to do reasonable things with things they BUY. Grr.
I agree with you on the WC3 issue as well. I really want to play WC3. But I won't buy it, not with the crap that they're pulling.
You've also got the two Ask Slashdots - the one re: the toilets (maybe that was real?) and definitely the one re: sexual performance. Though, granted, since a reader sent that in (assumedly), technically Slashdot editors only did do the one.
I definitely agree with you, though. Slashdot did what it was supposed to do. April Fool is actually a slow news day quite often (the dollar in Canada went down today because financial people believed an April Fool's joke!) and somehow I doubt that Slashdot actually ignored REAL news (the IP replacing Avian Carriers thing is real, as was the InfoSec defense training, and the MSNBC Games People Shouldn't Play)
You've got a very limited idea of "news" sites, then, at least IMHO. Most of the news sites I've passed today had a few April Fool's jokes. It should also be noted that the ONLY jokes that Slashdot created were the "Slashvertisements" which actually did take me a (split second) to realize that it was an April Fool's joke, and the two Ask Slashdots (the first one I'm still not sure about - maybe it was serious? ).
All of the other ones were propagated from OTHER sites. Tom's Hardware, Stepwise, the LKML, Google (!), The Register - all Slashdot did was report them. Whether or not you consider them news sources, I do.
Don't blame Slashdot. Slashdot doesn't create much news or research much news - it's a summary site - it grabs content from OTHER sites, in general. Lots of IT/geek sites had April Fool's jokes today, so, by extension, so did Slashdot.
*gasp*
:)
Then maybe you might actually want to go after the people who promulgate that hack, rather than after bnetd, which is completely legal.
That said, it will completely suck if Blizzard doesn't provide remote access to the keyserver - then they're really just holding a monopoly (battle.net servers) and refusing to let anyone else play.
If you want a good example of how life SHOULD be, take a look at what Bungie did with Myth II's server - they open sourced it when they decided to take it offline. I'm not saying that Blizzard wouldn't do the same - it's just looking very likely that they won't (they'll just remove WC2 support from the next battle.net setup, and poof, we're all out of luck...)
The idea would be that the client needs the return key to actually activate and play the game. Without the return key, the game wouldn't play. bnetd wouldn't handle the authentication portion of it at all.
Yes, what I'm suggesting is kindof something like Windows Product Activation - I'm not suggesting this is a good thing. What I'm suggesting is that if they're this paranoid about piracy, they are much more stringent restrictions they can allow.
Again, this is all a moot point, as they really only care about charging for battle.net. The funny thing is that even if they win against bnetd here (which they won't) as soon as they start charging, bnetd could start again, as battle.net servers are then a monetary resource, and Blizzard would be holding an illegal monopoly.
A: That only works on Blizzard games which have the TCP/IP option, which isn't true for all of them.
B: That's not a game server - that's connecting to play with friends. Blizzard provided a functionality for playing with a game server - they can't restrict it and say "uh, no, only ours." I could give reams of reasons why this is valid, but I only need to give one. It's fair use.
That's true - it wouldn't be hard to do that. It would also be illegal, and they could then go after those people. If this ever goes to trial (which it won't, as a judge would throw it out in a heartbeat) that point would be brought up, and I think a judge would find it hard to argue with that.
:)
You're right about not hacking the server, though - the clients could just communicate with a keyserver completely separate from the bnetd protocol completely - oh wait. That would be intelligent.
Blizzard's FAQ on their site unfortunately makes me believe that they do know, though I think they're mainly just being told what their lawyers tell them.
What I'd LIKE to point out to them is that there are several solutions (hello! math!) where they can guarantee that only legal copies are being used on battle.net, and provide an easy way for bnetd to prevent illegal copies there as well.
(Someone correct me if I'm wrong. I'm aware hackers could work around this, but it would take a lot of effort, and they'd have to hack both bnetd and their own client, so then it's not so easy)
You could easily give the CD-KEY to a blizzard keychecking server, which then not only figures out if the key is correct, but then generates a unique number, which, when hashed together with the original CD-KEY on the client, activates the product. Blizzard then forwards the result back to the bnetd server, and the bnetd server passes it back to the client. If it's incorrect, the client doesn't run (here's the key - the CLIENT doesn't run, not the server doesn't allow the client. The DMCA prevents you from bypassing something designed to prevent CLIENT copying, on the CLIENT).
You could hack around this, by altering both the bnetd server, and hacking the client to do it as well, but that's complicated and then Blizzard could go after people who are distributing the hacks that do that, rather than bnetd, because THAT would be clearly illegal.
This is better than a simple blind "accept/reject" system because it requires that any battle.net server has to communicate with Blizzard (or figure out the algorithm behind the Battle.net check/second key generation, which can be made quite difficult) and Blizzard guarantees that things are OK.
VHS is going away - that's the problem. I'd be glad to stick with VHS in a van while traveling, for instance, but I've got a feeling that in a while they won't exist anymore. That and why should I have to buy two copies of a movie to watch it in a home theatre and in a van while traveling? I own the bloody thing. I can watch it wherever I want. That's all I'm asking for.
And for God's sake, who the HELL said anything about ruining your experience? I didn't. All I'm saying is that pan and scan should exist ALONGSIDE widescreen - that is, you should be able to choose between them with a simple push of a button. God. It's insane the number of people that defend widescreen/letterbox with a bloody vengeance when all you do is suggest that "um, you know, P&S has a REASON for existing..."
(Thank you, also, for telling me what I will like and not like, but next time, you might want to realize that you're being very egotistical and self-centered - the Universe does not revolve around you, and the phrase "you won't like..." should never be used in any sort of discussion.)
Once more. Don't want all movies in Pan and Scan. Want movies in BOTH Pan and Scan AND widescreen. You can have your widescreen. I can watch movies in a location where the TV is not the center of attention without a telescope. Everyone's happy. Why am I getting so much argument about a solution where everyone's happy?
That's the stupidest comment I've ever heard in my life.
27" is a large TV. Try to carry it, or move it. More importantly, measure what percentage of your living room wall it takes up. It's huge. It's garish. Some of us actually ENJOY having a living room that the TV is not the center of attention.
A 13" TV is a decent sized TV - it's a good size to place in a bedroom, for instance. And did you ever think that you might want to watch movies while in bed with someone? In that case, I'd actually like to be able to SEE the movie.
DVDs are not only for audio/videophiles. They're becoming the de facto movie standard, and as such, they have to appeal to EVERYONE, not just a select group of people that have a very audio/video-centric way of life.
The funny thing is, if they want to say that the beta is their true reason for doing this, bnetd doesn't even support WC3 right now.
Blizzard can't possibly claim that battle.net cd-key checking is a copy protection method: it doesn't stop the copies from being made, or even from working (they DO work) - just prevents copies (actually, 'certain reported CD-keys' - so it could actually be used to ban individual people for no reason, even though Blizzard hasn't done this - yet) from working with their servers.
I have no idea why Blizzard is doing this, or why they haven't noticed that Vivendi's lawyers are monkeys (see my other post - that letter is real big crap, and they misinterpreted the USC 512 code they quoted). Vivendi's throwing money away, when Blizzard should be working with bnetd to try to fix this. If they really want to save money and stop piracy (rather than just charge for battle.net at a later time, which is what they REALLY want to do) they'd be doing that, which is what id software and every other game manufacturer in the world with online play has done.
Did anyone notice how INCREDIBLY unprofessional the letter from Blizzard/Vivendi was? Seriously, it basically amounted to "nope, we're right, you're wrong, post the software and we'll send Blizzard cops to go arrest you!" Then, I cracked up when I saw the EFF letter, which politely begins "Um, I hope this is going to the right place, considering you didn't have a return address...."
Vivendi didn't address ANY of their claims, specifically the point that 1201(c) and 1201(f) clearly ALLOW software such as bnetd (they might as well have specifically given this as an example of what the DMCA does NOT prevent) - just saying "no, you suck, go away." They also misinterpreted 17 U.S.C. it looks like, thinking that bnetd only had 10 business days to respond or they can't file a counter notification, whereas the statute is saying that the offending material can't be redistributed in less than 10 days after sending a counter notification.
Vivendi's actions are going to look really bad from a court's perspective - they're being very aggressive and holding their cards all to their chest, so if they do sue, and try to pull some trick, a judge isn't going to be very lenient.
I am very glad that the EFF is handling this, though - it would've been very difficult, if not impossible, for bnetd to handle it themselves.
I didn't say onscreen cues: the cues would be for the DVD player to move the image left and right. To the viewer, it would be identical to a pan and scan version.
And the pan & scan version is overseen by the director in most cases, so it's not like he didn't have a hand in it. In a lot of cases, the extra information isn't that important to the film, so it can be left out (it usually provides the 'immersive experience' you get with having a 30-foot movie screen - on a TV, that's not that helpful). Most of the time in widescreen all you're seeing is a couple extra trees, or a couple of extras walking around.
I'm not saying that widescreen's useless. I'm saying that it's not the only way to watch a movie, and really, there are benefits to a pan & scan approach (physical resolution being the main one) - if I can't make out the entire movie, what's the point of watching it?
What about a 13" TV from 7 feet away? Somehow I don't think you would've been too happy then. What about a 9" TV, like cars and vans have?
27" is a large TV. 57" is huge.
It's not a concept of field of view, it's a concept of focus, which is far more limited than 90 degrees - something 45 degrees off the center of vision is going to be slightly out of focus, which your brain will notice. Movement draws the eye, upon which point you focus on the object which moved.
I just did an experiment - take a book (~16:9 aspect ratio, a little less wide for most standard books) and hold it on its side. Stare at the center. Now try to read WITHOUT moving your eye anything over to the side of the book. It's out of focus. If you try to read it, your eyes jump there. If you had two things at opposite ends of the book drawing your eye, it'd jump back and forth.
Widescreen is better because it includes more information that the eye would SEE naturally, yes, but if you put two important things that are going to draw the eye on either side of the screen, your eyes are going to be jumping back and forth.
YAY! Has anyone seen this actually work? My only problem is that I've never seen a DVD with a feature like this actually work, so you can tell my skepticism...
As I said before, scenes like that are not good scenes, quite frankly - you're putting two focal points of the action at opposite ends of the picture, so in the audience, your eyes are switching back and forth just like the pan and scan is doing.
I, however, don't think it's distracting, just for that reason - my eyes are doing the same thing the pan and scan is (my response to that would be - well, you shouldn't've filmed the thing that close and put focal points at opposite edges of the film).
Note that I'm not saying that pan and scan is better than widescreen. It's not - having a display that's at the same resolution and aspect ratio as the film would be the ideal situation. But in some cases, people would want pan & scan (those with small televisions, for instance) and in some cases, you'd want widescreen (people who want to see the movie as it was originally). There's nothing wrong with either point.
Except all the DVDs I've ever seen are almost always in widescreen only, with no option to shift to pan and scan. Am I missing something? Is there SUPPOSED to be a way to shift a DVD that lists itself as "widescreen version" into a pan & scan? This is kinda what I'm trying to say: there's no reason you couldn't have letterbox, pan and scan, true widescreen, and purple elephant mode on the same DVD, with the same image stream, as it's all digital, and it's just an image conversion.
Try looking at a widescreen movie on a 13" TV from more than 2 inches away and you'll understand the problem. Trying to say "well, everyone should have a 35" TV or better" is stupid - I own a 27" TV, but I understand when people say that they only want a small TV, because large TVs are intrusive and garish.
Look, I'm not talking about it from a filmmaker's perspective. I'm talking about simply displaying only a portion of the stream, and scrolling left and right as necessary. Would it suck? Yes. But who cares? You can switch back and forth between the widescreen and this Pan & Scan all you want.
I once again say: if you put a 16:9 image on a 4:3 set with bars, you're decreasing the (real, physical: pixels per inch) resolution on the vertical axis on 100% of the film. I'd rather have a director choose which portion of the film is meaningless rather than trying to stare fruitlessly at the film and say "wait: what did that just say? I can't make it out, it's too small."
As for the HDTV thing, honestly - HDTV may or may not be the standard in 2006. My guess is no - government and industries don't mandate standards - people really do. If people say "no, I don't want to replace my TV" people will cater to them. It will happen that way.
Most DVD players that are based on computer DVD-ROMs do have zoom. Any Apex series DVD player does, and basically all of the "work alikes" of it do - basically anything that advertises that it plays MP3s as well.
With a 2.35:1 movie, you could just 'zoom' in an additional step, and pan & scan more. Would it suck? Yes. But who cares? It's a stream of instructions, rather than an MPEG-2 stream, so it doesn't cost you much at all (besides the person-time to do it).
I mean, come on. The stream's digital, it has a native resolution, and it wants to display it on a foreign resolution system. Their answer is always to display that native resolution onto the foreign resolution system by simply having no information in the 'extra' portion of the screen that doesn't meet their aspect ratio. This is dumb - you could also have the player only play a portion of the stream and not output the portion that is 'off' screen, and there's NO reason that the portion of the stream that's being displayed can't be controlled via an additional data set on the DVD. You don't lose resolution anywhere, everyone's happy, no problems (and it's aficionados, not affectionados).
Honestly, it all comes down to just "you have data, it's this resolution, this aspect ratio. how do you want to display it?" There's no reason you can't have the DVD player showing it full-screen, but only a portion of the frame, and shifting left and right as need be. If there are portions that in the pan and scan that use the full frame portion, you can store the full frame stream in the MPEG stream, and have the 16:9 display only display a portion of the full frame. If there are portions in the MPEG stream where the full frame doesn't exist because of CG, then fine, strip the full frame in the MPEG stream, and have the Pan & Scan zoom in. There, you'd lose a bit of resolution, but it's only for the people doing pan and scan, and DVD MPEG resolution's higher than TV anyway, so it's no big harm.
Ah HA! So I was right! :) (note that I said anamorphic widescreen is 'roughly' 1.8 - which is 1.77 rounded :) )
I don't see why everyone is always so perfectly fine with black bars at the top and bottom of the screen. They're not 'okay', they're a pain, and I would rather have a director/editor choosing what's important to the film and what's not rather than blandly scrapping information from the whole film in general.
No, instead, you're junking all of the film by compressing its vertical resolution. As much as I love squinting, I think I'll deal with losing a portion of the film that an editor and the director thought were useless, and be happy seeing ALL of an actor's face, and being able to read text on screen without an ungodly expensive TV.
Pan & scan isn't that bad, you know, and widescreen TV's aren't that good an idea: they're very unwieldy, and they really only look good when they're BIG. A small widescreen TV would just look comical.