Companies are thier to make money...On the other side is the employee who needs a job
I agree with that. But then the question is this: whose rights are more important? Those of a living, breathing, human being? Or those of a money-making machine that has the financial ability to crush said human being into the ground?
want to do what ever they can to do well at the new place of employment
This part of it is a bogus generalization though...
I'm sorry, but I don't see what's so wrong with this. If I were a CEO, I wouldn't want an employee taking knowledge learned at our company to a similar company.
Fair enough. But what if you were the employee who wanted to leave to go to work somewhere else? How would you feel if your former employer used legal threats to try to keep you either a) working for them or b) from working in your chosen profession?
There is also a distinction that needs to be made between "knowledge learned from our company" and proprietary information/trade secrets. If a person learns how to program the photonic widget-scapers that your company makes from your company during the course of his employment, he should certainly be able to go somewhere else to program photonic widget-scrapers if he so chooses.
I do work for a company where we had employees join us with CDs full of information that had taken with them from their previous company, regardless of the non-disclosure agreements they signed.
I too have worked for companies like that. But then that's the risks that you take. If your proprietary information shows up in another product you sue the manufacturer and the schmuck who stole your trade secrets. The referred article had nothing to do with people who willfully stole proprietary information from one employer to help them at another. It was about companies preventing people from working for competitors because no matter how hard those individuals tried they could not help but have and make use of inside knowledge of a competitor. There's a big difference.
The example that they stated (PepsiCo vs. Redmond) I think is a good example of a reasonable application of this doctrine. But there are plenty of other cases where it is abused or used as a legal club to discourage employment of specific individuals.
Moving to a 3D world is irrelevent for sales. Proof: Diablo 2 has sold 2 million copies! Graphics are the "bait" of a game. Gameplay is the "meat" of a game.
That's confusing to me. I played Diablo I and Diablo II. They were both beautiful games graphically speaking. But I'm not addicted to either of them like I have been off and on for several years with UO. I've always felt that the gameplay in the Diablo games sucked. Diablo II had a little more plot to it, but not much.
Personally, I think that it was the simplicity of Diablo that made the games such hits. People who never play computer games (several people's wives that I know) got hooked on the Diablo games, mainly because they could play online with a group and didn't need much training to figure it out. Quake and similar games have the same kind of mass-market appeal because of the simplicity of playing and the playing in a group aspects. Only Quake and clones take more reflexes that Diablo...
A good 3D engine does not make a great game. But a good game with a great 3D engine is better than a simply great game. A 3D engine similar to the one in Ultima IX (only faster and better looking since 3D accelerator technology has improved so much) would work wonders for the immersiveness of the game.
I'm not a hardcore player, but my ideal MMORPG wet-dream has 3 main components:
1. All the goodness that UO currently has...lots of variety, lots of players, lots of options.
2. An awesome, immersive 3D engine that really makes you go "Wow!" when the environment changes.
3. Integrated speech capability with party members or selected other players. I'd much rather be able to actually talk to my teammates than have to stop what I'm doing and type it.
That last item is the big one. I dreamed of that years ago when playing the original X-Wing game on my 486. "Dude, wouldn't this be cool if Lucasarts eventually made this game multiplayer so we could fly as a team? And talk to each other at the same time! That would rule!" Yeah, it's all bandwidth limited. But with the increased rollouts of broadband, I can hope. That's my holy grail.
And maybe, just maybe one day UO will get there. 5 years from now they will have weened everyone off of their 2D isometric world and be playing in my ideal world. I hope so.
I thought that Akalabeth was basically a dungeon crawl with no world map, but then later on he took Akalabeth and added to it to create Ultima I. It was in his interview on the Ultima Collection CD that came with the Ultima IX Dragon Edition.
So why is everyone all bent out of shape over the UO2 cancellation?? If I were a UO player, I'd be ecstatic! I, for example, would far rather see Origin continue to re-vamp and update the game that I spend a lot of time monthly playing, than dump it, and go off to work on some new game, leaving me to wonder, why am I still playing? Instead, why not make the rendering engine fully 3D -- heck use the one they were working on for UO2! And, expand the world to, oh, twice the size!...add twice as more creatures!...fix all the bugs! And so on... No reason to start from scratch.
I've always felt the same way. UO is a fun game, but there are some annoying limitations (for the sake of immersiveness too) with their isometric 2d (and now "3d") engine. UO needs more land and less congestion, especially around the towns. I was ecstatic when I discovered the new lands in T2A because I could then play without tripping (or chugging) through a screen (or 20) full of houses that were constantly popping into view.
I played Ultima IX, and though it wasn't nearly as much fun from a gameplay standpoint as previous Ultimas, I still enjoyed it. I was glad to see a word that I knew so well being finally realized in 3D splendor. Ultima IX was nothing if not beautiful as hell to look at. I had great hopes for UO2 that it would do the same but with a larger world and a better engine. And that's what it looked like was happening. And then those bastards canned it...
I really do hope that they pour more resources into the original UO to constantly improve it (maybe even porting the UO2 3D engine to its world). I really do hope that it's not just some BS marketing-speak excuse for canning the project. But with the majority of Origin employees getting let go as well, that doesn't seem likely.
If it's not our playground, why do you INSIST on keeping the playground OPEN, PUBLIC, UNCENSORED and ACCESSIBLE to mankind ? Wow, you even ask to pay the kids playing on it to PAY YOU ?
Because it is a powerful tool that can enrich, simplify, and generally improve people's lives if it is used as such. It's only when clueless "trendies" think that they can use it as a playground or a babysitter or some other goofy purpose for which it was never intended that we have these kinds of problems.
Wouldn't it be good enough, you alone play with your technolgoical toys then ? Please don't pest us with your technology. Because WE are just too dumb to play with it safely. Too hysterical to continue to provide you with your next salary as your playground user.
Um...we didn't pester you with it. Nor did we come to your house, kick in your door, and put a gun to your head forcing you to use it. People choose to use the Internet. Nobody forces them. If you can't handle the responsibility of dealing with the results of your choices, then perhaps you need to do some more growing up before you make any more choices.
BTW, your statistical risk analysis stinks. Even if the likelyhood to be struck by a car is greater than the likelyhood to get kidnapped by a stalker (kidnapping is the issue here ?) , that doesn't mean that people haven't agreed some traffic security regulations to make getting struck by a car less likely and provide means, if the car's driver speeds away, to trace him down via the car's license plate.
Apparently kidnapping is the issue. But first I'd like to point out that no matter how it's done, kidnapping is illegal in all 50 US States, and more than 95% of the "civilized" world. There are laws in place against it. No matter how it is done, there are methods of investigating it and prosecuting violators, just like there are methods of investigating and prosecuting the drivers of autos who hit pedestrians. So what is your point? It appears that you have none.
But you know, there are also laws that help to prevent kidnapping. There are privacy laws. There are laws that say that you cannot profile minors for marketing purposes "to protect the children." There are laws that say that AOL doesn't have to release your personal information to any potential stalker who calls them up and asks for it, even if they pose as the hysterical mother of a missing child.
And who are you to decide, what the acceptable risk level is and what the absolute value a "statistically insignificant" ocurrence of an event should be.
You too are apparently of the kind that "just don't get it." Do you know what statistically insignificant means? By definition.00001% is going to be statistically insignificant. Of course, statistics don't mean much to you if you're that 1 person out of 10 million, but that's another story. You should have been more careful. Then again, Darwin did have a good point, and the world is overpopulated...
. Guess what, the dumb, hysterical idiot users will demand a democratic vote on that one, and you can bet, that the dumb-a** of the world will NOT let the technological intelligentia[sic] determine that.
A democratic vote? Are you kidding? Do you actually believe that this country (since the context of this article is in the US) would actually create a nationwide referendum to vote on what is statisitaclly significant in the case of kidnapping? We can't even elect a president! The technological intelligentsia may not be making decisions on the laws of this country, but the political intelligentsia do make those decisions. Only they don't make them based on true circumstances, knowledge, or experience. They make them based on what the company that is funding their campaign wants. Which would you prefer?
The times were gurus can hide out behind the phony "benevolent dictatorship" argument are over. Do you have any proof that your dictatorship is benevolent ?
Benevolent dictatorship??? When did I become part of the ruling class? I assure you that any dictatorship of mine would be anything but benevolent. Off with your head!
-- Who will be the next master race ? The technological guru ? --
Master race? You really do belittle all the people who suffered and died at the hands of the Nazi's with that statement. That's disgusting.
I'm apalued that one would place security at a $7/hour paying job, over the safety of a child. I actually find that sickening. That information should have been given out, piss on AOL's policy. Not saying give that info out to every Tom, Dick, and Harry...but come one now.
OK, so how do you determine which Tom, Dick, or Harry you should give that info out to?
And I also am shocked about AOL's poilcy on that. I mean, they see no problem in using your personal information to send you spam out the ass. But as soon as a child's safety is in question "sorry, that information is sacred, we can not give it out to anyone" No, it's they won't give it out for a pirce.
As much as I hate spam, you're way off the mark here. AOL has a spam bullseye painted on it's chest, that I agree. But even if AOL made available it's entire mailing list for free to spammers, selling a list of email addresses is still a far cry from giving out the true name and address of a user. And assuming that you could buy a list of all AOL subscribers names and addresses (for direct marketing purposes or whatever), there's no way that it would be correleated with user names SPECIFICALLY so that you couldn't track down the "19 year-old hottie" that you were chatting with last nite (or the "13 year old punk-ass" who jumped in in the middle and pretended to be your gay lover just for kicks).
Makes me think that parent shouldn't have called customer service, they should have called marketing and just bought the information.
No, if this were true then the parent should have called the police. AOL can't enforce the law against a "pedophile" (if that were the case in this instance) and neither can a mother.
And to everyone that says "the parents should have been watching their child" It's impossible to look over your child 24/7 let alone just bad parenting to do so.
I agree. That's why in addition to supervising children until they are old enough to make responsible decisions on their own, a parent should spend some time teaching, training, and otherwise educating their children on the fact that life is not a giant fuzzy bunny (or singing purple dinosaur). Life is deadly. It will eventually kill us all. If you screw around and do stupid things, you'll end up dead sooner than expected.
This was just a mother scared that her child was oen of the many that leave their house because someone in AOL convinced them to do, and they aren't seen again until someoen finds them in a ditch on some old hunting road 6 months later.
You don't know that's what this was, and neither did AOL. And I think that it's preposterous that you refer to "one of the many that leave their house because someone in AOL convinced them to do, and they aren't seen again until someoen finds them in a ditch on some old hunting road 6 months later." People who have this happen to them are in the far far far minority. Out of 100 million people (or more) using the internet in the United States, how many has this happened to? 20? 30? Even if it happened to 1000 people (one a day for the past 3 years, which I find highly unlikely), this is still less than 1/100000 of a single percent. That's statistically insignificant. You probably have a better chance of being hit by a car crossing the street than being kidnapped by an Internet stalker.
You (and this hysterical "mother") are another example of people who just don't get it. You fail to comprehend what the technology is and how it can be used and the realities that come with it. Then when it doesn't work the way that you feel it should you rail against it as if it were your personal playground. It's not your playground. It's not your child's playground. It's not a playground at all, and it certainly doesn't need to be censored, cleaned up, or otherwise nerfed for the "children's sake."
This bill was prompted by SPAM to the author's, Garcia, AOL account popping up porn before being caught by the AOL parental controls.
Hmm...let's see here. AOL Parental Controls = censorware/filterware. Pornographic SPAM gets past AOL Parental controls. Therefore, censorware cannot filter or block all objectionable content. So he decides that what's needed is to mandate the use of software that in his personal experience does not work to fix a problem that was first illustrated to him by the failure of that same software.
Well...that explains quite a few things about Texas anyway...
You missed the point. I don't want Windows on my PC. I don't want censorware on my PC. I don't want them on my PC because I disagree morally with what Microsoft and the companies who produce censorware stand for. I don't like that they market based on FUD instead of based on the merit of their products. I don't like that they try to mandate the purchase of their software.
I am a 28-year old single man who lives alone with his 4 computers. If it comes time to upgrade those computers, I would have to buy 4 copies of Windows (which I don't want or need) and 4 copies of the censorware (which I don't want or need) because some schmuck politician says so. Maybe the censorware only adds $10 to the price of each PC, but why should I have to buy it in the first place? Why should the government be allowed to force me to buy that software and support a company or group of companies that are founded upon an idealogy that I oppose?
Or even more interesting, what if I want to order systems with Linux pre-installed and avoid the Windows licensing fees altogether. Under this law, I wouldn't be able to because filtering software doesn't exist for Linux.
If it were his personal emails that we were talking about, he could just as easily get an AOL account under some pseudonym. If it's not part of the government system, it's not really our property is it? So long as it's not paid for with government money.
This isn't *JUST* his personal email. There were quite a few senior US Government officials on this list. Dubby's new email policy doesn't just apply to his personal mail, it applies to the whole shebang.
The email message and its addressees were obtained by the New York Times. Under government regulations, White House emails form part of the federal presidential record and could be subject to subpoena.
Mr Bush's email address list included Don Evans, the Commerce Secretary, Andrew Card, White House Chief of Staff, Karl Rove, chief strategist, and Condoleezza Rice, National Security Adviser.
I've seen quite a few people who were talking about this issue like it was Dubby's personal email that he stopped using. The quotes above from the referenced article seem to indicate otherwise. I could understand it if he didn't want personal messages to become a matter of public record, but we're talking about communications with other government officials which SHOULD be part of the public record. What is he trying to hide?
The most interesting thing about Napster was its viral nature. The fact that where there was previously a single copy of a song available for download, there soon became 100 copies available for download. I experienced this the other night when I downloaded a single that had been stuck in my head all day long. It took me about 2 minutes to pull it from another user. I left my PC up overnite and when I woke up the next morning it had been downloaded 167 times. That's 167 more copies out there floating around, many of which are available for download.
There are still songs that are evading the filters either through misspellings or fudged naming. I find those files all the time because I rarely search on a full song title. The Wired article says that right now it's kinda hard to find anything. That makes sense. There are fewer results being returned that bypassed the filters. But in a week, those people who did find it will have it available for download, and the number of hits will increase dramatically. It's only a matter of time. And to be honest, neither the RIAA or Napster will be able to run fast enough to keep up with a million or more determined users.
Great idea. We'll compile a list of all of the affected class. Then we'll send them all emails to tell them about this new class-action suit against people who send out unsolicited bulk emails...
I can't believe that I'm apparently the first to point this out, but Nautilus 1.0 isn't officially released yet. There's supposed to be an official rollout announcement later this month.
With any luck, you'll be able to get it for your distro and/or platform at that time.
And don't give me the old argument that "I could get all the porn I wanted when I was three years old." Yeah, maybe so, but not at the public library you didn't.
Funny thing that. I remember getting hummers at the library when I was a kid. I was 13 and my "girlfriend" and I didn't have a supervision-free place to hang out, so we'd always meet at the Public Library. Then, when nobody was looking we'd sneak out back or into a bathroom or something and fool around.
Back in the day...anyway.
So should I whack my four-year-old daughter in the head every other day, or drop her off at the corner crack house once a month so that she will be tough enough to "survive"?
I think that you're being ridiculous in you assertion here. I was hurt plenty when I was growing up, and I turned out OK. My parents would smack my fingers when I reached for a hot pan on the stove. They'd spank me if I did something more dangerous. When they weren't around and I was older, I played with fire and made homemade crossbows and all sorts of other dangerous things. I burned myself. I cut myself. I bruised myself. I fell off the roof of my best friend's garage.
Every time I hurt myself I learned from my mistake. I also learned not to be a total puss and that it's OK to take a few knocks every now and then. I learned that it's not only OK to get hurt physically and emotionally, but that it's IMPORTANT to get hurt physically and emotionally every once in a while. No matter how hard you try to prevent it it's going to happen sometimes sooner or later. It's important for kids to learn that when they're young so that they are prepared for it when it happens. Hardship breeds character. Parents in modern society breed whiney little bastards who are good for nothing but beating the secret boss on level 42 of Pokemon vs. Mario.
To be perfectly honest, most of the growing up that I did in my life I did when my parents weren't around. Mainly this was because I had the freedom to make my mistakes and learn from them. Sure, my parents were always there for me if I needed them. They provided an immeasurable amount of guidance and support. But it was only when I was away from their supervision that I really had the chance to apply their teaching to reality. This is the way that it has been for thousands of years. It's a good system, and it works reasonably well.
When I was growing up, we had this stereotype of the girls who went to the strict Catholic schools. They were all prim and proper because of the restrictive environment. But once they got out of school into the real world they were the most fun to party with. This is because they had never had a dose of reality. They weren't aware of the consequences of their actions, and they were so starved for what they had been deprived of that you could get them to do just about anything. And I do mean anything. You can raise your kids in a bubble world, but eventually they will break out of it. And they're usually better off having had exposure to the real world before they do.
Now we are living in the digital age. We can have total control over the digital space. We've become so spoiled by this that we (well...not me personally...us as a species) believe that we can impose a paradigm of digital control to the analog reality. It simply doesn't work that way. It won't work that way, and it CANNOT work that way.
They lose money on each console they sell. This happens for three reasons.
1) They produce consoles when it costs lots to make and market them (in the begining).
2) They need to get their console into your home.
3) They need you to buy the games for the console
Unfortunately Sega got the hardcore gamers with the DreamCast but those hardcore gamers are internet/computer savy. Those gamers did not buy as much software after the lauch smoke had cleared. I'm not saying that piracy was the only reason the system died...that lies also with Sega not getting the non hardcore gamers to buy the console and its games.
Bottom line: If you buy the dreamcast now and pirate the games, congratulations, you have cost Sega money.
Sega is an interesting example. They bailed on the Dreamcast hardware business so that they could concentrate on the software (very profitable) side of the business. The DC (from what I've seen) is a very capable console system.
However, it does seem to have been initially priced rather lower than the consoles from Sony and MS, even though it's still got comparable equipment (well, maybe not compared to the X-box). It almost looks as if Sega made a mistake by pricing the unit too low and losing too much on the initial sales. Still, they've produced and sold millions of units. And when they decided to get out of the hardware business they cut the prices to move the rest of the units and thereby increase their potential market for the software.
To be honest, Sony is probably more responsible for the death of the Dreamcast than anything else. I heard tons of people saying, "Yeah the Dreamcast is great, but the PS2 is just around the corner and it's even better, so I'm gonna wait!" Besides the fact that Sega really has trouble competing with the Sony PS line anyway.
Even still, the Dreamcast is far from dead (it even runs Linux!). They may not be making them anymore but there is still a substantial market for Dreamcast games. So Sega's not gonna take as big of a hit as you'd think (if at all).
Sounds like sales BS to me. If I'm not mistaken, the whole idea of the Internet was that it was a system that couldn't be broken when a single link went down. It doesn't matter how fast he can "shut a customer who was being attacked off from one backbone and re-route all traffic to and through another faster than a DDoS attacker could shift gears." If you can get out to the Internet, then packets can get routed back to you. Either that, or you filtering them somewhere upstream. Unless he's changing your IP address, which can cause no end of headaches.
Actually, it's kinda funny that he should use the phrase "faster than a DDoS attacker chan shift gears." The whole point about it being a DDoS is that it's not just one guy, it's a guy with an army of machines working at computer and network speed to flood your connection. As long as the target address doesn't change, it keeps firing packets that way.
Don't ever trust a salesperson for technical info...
I think that people overstate the cases of piracy. Is it wrong? Sure. Does it cost Sony (or MS, or whoever) money? Sure. Does it cost a company billions of dollars? Nope.
I understand that Sony sells these systems at a loss and then make up the difference and then some on the games. That's fine. But you characterizing it as a multibillion dollar hit is ridiculous. Sony makes money hand over fist with the PS and PS2 and games licensing. If they didn't, they wouldn't be in this business. Sony is not an impoverished company desperate to try anything to stem the financial bloodloss of piracy. They are a multi- tens of billions dollar international mega-corporation that is making obscene amounts of money off of this scheme. Sony wouldn't be making the PS2 if they weren't making a killing on them (by them, I mean the whole PS2 culture, as we know they don't make money on the console).
Let's be honest here. I know tons of people who have Playstations. I don't know anybody who has a hacked Playstation. I don't know anybody who has any pirated games. Certainly there are people who have a closet full of pirated games, but they are absolutely the minority. Most people wouldn't know how to pirate a game if their life depended on it. We (in the tech biz) tend to believe the inflated piracy figures simply due to our exposure to the technology. We know how trivially easy it is to dupe a game. We are by far the exception to the rule though.
Sony may lose several million dollars a year due to piracy. But it's not losing millions because Joe Blow rented a Playstation game and copied it on his CDR and plays it on a hacked system. They lose millions to the professional pirates who have duplication factories set up that do nothing but copy games 24x7 and sell them for $10 a piece. That's who they need to go after.
And BTW, the people who have the resources to pirate on a massive scale also have the resources to disable Sony's copy protection, or maintain their own pirate authentication server, or whatever else they want. The people that Sony is inconveniencing are the legitimate users.
Yes, look at the whole Windows XP activation. It's the same thing. And you mention it like it was some sort of a hoax or something. I assure you that it is not. The Windows XP authenication does exist, and it is (partially) implemented in build 2446.
While it's certainly possible that this is a hoax, I wouldn't be surprised if it were not a hoax. Stop and think about it. Who was behind the DMCA that makes circumvention of this scheme illegal? Media companies. Record companies. COMPANIES LIKE SONY!
They asked for laws to protect just this kind of hairbrained scheme, and now that they've got it they're going to use it.
Wow. I think that I'm the first post here that says, "You can't hack it without violating the DMCA."
How do you like them apples? We could raise a generation of Federal criminals because they want to be able to play their cousin's copy of SuperNinjaJapaneseCartoonyKiller (can you tell that I don't play console games???) on their system.
Ignoring a clear violation of your legal rights by saying "I can hack around it" isn't going to cut it.
"Sure I hacked it, but I only hacked around it so that I could play my game at my friend's house, so it's not really a crime is it?"
"Yes son, it is a crime. And you will be prosecuted for it."
"BUT IT'S NOT FAAAAIIIR!!!"
"Son, there's no such thing as Fair Use anymore, so quit your whining and get into the squad car."
Are you kidding? They'll make up enough to cover the difference. Once you have subscribed to the official Sony Online Authorization Service and they're raking in their monthly fees, they'll be just fine.
Yeah... it was outside out the territorial waters, however the platform actually belong to the British Ministry Of Defence, so it was property of the British Government... and they could argue that it still is, since they have never formally relinquished sovereignty.
If I'm not mistaken, they did "relinquish the platform" "to the seas," which is why he was able to lay claim to it to begin with and why it's held up in court.
If they really wanted to go to town, they could prevent HeavenCo from trading anywhere in the western world if they proved they're an accessory to organised crime, copyright infringement etc. Let's admit it, there's no other reason why HeavenCo exists, the free speech argument seems pretty fickle, since you would be protected in the US or any half decent country anyway.
You're kidding, right? I do live in the US and I can tell you, the "protections" offered are practically a sham to begin with. But then it becomes doubly so when you choose to exercise free speech by saying something about the government or big business (look at Scientology for an example). The laws in the US come down squarely on the side of business, not the individual. For all of our bragging and chest-beating about our freedoms, we don't have squat that big business doesn't give us or permit us to have. We're all slaves over here, most of us just don't know it yet.
But that's beside the point. What if you don't live in a "halfway decent" country? What if you live in China, or another country with a reputation of human rights violations for dissenters? What if you live somewhere that doesn't believe in free speech? What if you are an oppressed group of Kurdish rebels who want to use groupware like Lotus Notes and Quickplace to collaborate about planning the downfall of Saddam Hussein? OK, that's a funny picture, but the theory is right anyway. HavenCo seems like a reasonable option to me.
I think the owners of HeavenCo live in the US, the government could also pressure them for running illicit businesses.
And now you've already made the jump in logic from, "nobody needs privacy except criminals" (which is in itself flawed as all hell) to, "HavenCo is an illicit business." Frankly, I don't see how you can even begin to make the case that HavenCo is running an illicit business when they are providing a secure, private, CoLo service. There are companies here in the US that do the same thing. The only difference is that the laws of Sealand protect HavenCo from the abuses of the US Legal system. It's like incorporating your business in the state of Delaware because their laws are much more business friendly, even though your business is located in California.
What really disgusts me the most about your post is your ignorant assertion that encryption and privacy is for criminals. We all have a right to privacy. We all have a right to enforce that privacy via encryption, or a lock on our front door, or window blinds.
I could just as easily claim that because you (presumably) keep your front door locked when you aren't home that you are hiding something "illicit" inside. Maybe you have a meth lab in your basement. I dunno that, but it's obvious that you're hiding something.
What's that you say? You're merely trying to keep intruders out? You don't want someone to walk into your home while you're gone and steal your computer and TV equipment? Oh, well that's OK then. Just like it's OK for companies and individual to use secure methods to protect their company's data from intrusion or thievery.
I know, I was making a joke. Actually, it woulda been pretty funny to see them use a real IP address. There no doubt would have been a hoard of geeks descending upon whatever site was using that IP address in a Slashdot Effect-like flood.
Slashdot Mirror
Companies are thier to make money...On the other side is the employee who needs a job
I agree with that. But then the question is this: whose rights are more important? Those of a living, breathing, human being? Or those of a money-making machine that has the financial ability to crush said human being into the ground?
want to do what ever they can to do well at the new place of employment
This part of it is a bogus generalization though...
I'm sorry, but I don't see what's so wrong with this. If I were a CEO, I wouldn't want an employee taking knowledge learned at our company to a similar company.
Fair enough. But what if you were the employee who wanted to leave to go to work somewhere else? How would you feel if your former employer used legal threats to try to keep you either a) working for them or b) from working in your chosen profession?
There is also a distinction that needs to be made between "knowledge learned from our company" and proprietary information/trade secrets. If a person learns how to program the photonic widget-scapers that your company makes from your company during the course of his employment, he should certainly be able to go somewhere else to program photonic widget-scrapers if he so chooses.
I do work for a company where we had employees join us with CDs full of information that had taken with them from their previous company, regardless of the non-disclosure agreements they signed.
I too have worked for companies like that. But then that's the risks that you take. If your proprietary information shows up in another product you sue the manufacturer and the schmuck who stole your trade secrets. The referred article had nothing to do with people who willfully stole proprietary information from one employer to help them at another. It was about companies preventing people from working for competitors because no matter how hard those individuals tried they could not help but have and make use of inside knowledge of a competitor. There's a big difference.
The example that they stated (PepsiCo vs. Redmond) I think is a good example of a reasonable application of this doctrine. But there are plenty of other cases where it is abused or used as a legal club to discourage employment of specific individuals.
Moving to a 3D world is irrelevent for sales. Proof: Diablo 2 has sold 2 million copies! Graphics are the "bait" of a game. Gameplay is the "meat" of a game.
That's confusing to me. I played Diablo I and Diablo II. They were both beautiful games graphically speaking. But I'm not addicted to either of them like I have been off and on for several years with UO. I've always felt that the gameplay in the Diablo games sucked. Diablo II had a little more plot to it, but not much.
Personally, I think that it was the simplicity of Diablo that made the games such hits. People who never play computer games (several people's wives that I know) got hooked on the Diablo games, mainly because they could play online with a group and didn't need much training to figure it out. Quake and similar games have the same kind of mass-market appeal because of the simplicity of playing and the playing in a group aspects. Only Quake and clones take more reflexes that Diablo...
A good 3D engine does not make a great game. But a good game with a great 3D engine is better than a simply great game. A 3D engine similar to the one in Ultima IX (only faster and better looking since 3D accelerator technology has improved so much) would work wonders for the immersiveness of the game.
I'm not a hardcore player, but my ideal MMORPG wet-dream has 3 main components:
1. All the goodness that UO currently has...lots of variety, lots of players, lots of options.
2. An awesome, immersive 3D engine that really makes you go "Wow!" when the environment changes.
3. Integrated speech capability with party members or selected other players. I'd much rather be able to actually talk to my teammates than have to stop what I'm doing and type it.
That last item is the big one. I dreamed of that years ago when playing the original X-Wing game on my 486. "Dude, wouldn't this be cool if Lucasarts eventually made this game multiplayer so we could fly as a team? And talk to each other at the same time! That would rule!" Yeah, it's all bandwidth limited. But with the increased rollouts of broadband, I can hope. That's my holy grail.
And maybe, just maybe one day UO will get there. 5 years from now they will have weened everyone off of their 2D isometric world and be playing in my ideal world. I hope so.
I thought that Akalabeth was basically a dungeon crawl with no world map, but then later on he took Akalabeth and added to it to create Ultima I. It was in his interview on the Ultima Collection CD that came with the Ultima IX Dragon Edition.
So why is everyone all bent out of shape over the UO2 cancellation?? If I were a UO player, I'd be ecstatic! I, for example, would far rather see Origin continue to re-vamp and update the game that I spend a lot of time monthly playing, than dump it, and go off to work on some new game, leaving me to wonder, why am I still playing? Instead, why not make the rendering engine fully 3D -- heck use the one they were working on for UO2! And, expand the world to, oh, twice the size!...add twice as more creatures!...fix all the bugs! And so on... No reason to start from scratch.
I've always felt the same way. UO is a fun game, but there are some annoying limitations (for the sake of immersiveness too) with their isometric 2d (and now "3d") engine. UO needs more land and less congestion, especially around the towns. I was ecstatic when I discovered the new lands in T2A because I could then play without tripping (or chugging) through a screen (or 20) full of houses that were constantly popping into view.
I played Ultima IX, and though it wasn't nearly as much fun from a gameplay standpoint as previous Ultimas, I still enjoyed it. I was glad to see a word that I knew so well being finally realized in 3D splendor. Ultima IX was nothing if not beautiful as hell to look at. I had great hopes for UO2 that it would do the same but with a larger world and a better engine. And that's what it looked like was happening. And then those bastards canned it...
I really do hope that they pour more resources into the original UO to constantly improve it (maybe even porting the UO2 3D engine to its world). I really do hope that it's not just some BS marketing-speak excuse for canning the project. But with the majority of Origin employees getting let go as well, that doesn't seem likely.
If it's not our playground, why do you INSIST on keeping the playground OPEN, PUBLIC, UNCENSORED and ACCESSIBLE to mankind ? Wow, you even ask to pay the kids playing on it to PAY YOU ?
.00001% is going to be statistically insignificant. Of course, statistics don't mean much to you if you're that 1 person out of 10 million, but that's another story. You should have been more careful. Then again, Darwin did have a good point, and the world is overpopulated...
Because it is a powerful tool that can enrich, simplify, and generally improve people's lives if it is used as such. It's only when clueless "trendies" think that they can use it as a playground or a babysitter or some other goofy purpose for which it was never intended that we have these kinds of problems.
Wouldn't it be good enough, you alone play with your technolgoical toys then ? Please don't pest us with your technology. Because WE are just too dumb to play with it safely. Too hysterical to continue to provide you with your next salary as your playground user.
Um...we didn't pester you with it. Nor did we come to your house, kick in your door, and put a gun to your head forcing you to use it. People choose to use the Internet. Nobody forces them. If you can't handle the responsibility of dealing with the results of your choices, then perhaps you need to do some more growing up before you make any more choices.
BTW, your statistical risk analysis stinks. Even if the likelyhood to be struck by a car is greater than the likelyhood to get kidnapped by a stalker (kidnapping is the issue here ?) , that doesn't mean that people haven't agreed some traffic security regulations to make getting struck by a car less likely and provide means, if the car's driver speeds away, to trace him down via the car's license plate.
Apparently kidnapping is the issue. But first I'd like to point out that no matter how it's done, kidnapping is illegal in all 50 US States, and more than 95% of the "civilized" world. There are laws in place against it. No matter how it is done, there are methods of investigating it and prosecuting violators, just like there are methods of investigating and prosecuting the drivers of autos who hit pedestrians. So what is your point? It appears that you have none.
But you know, there are also laws that help to prevent kidnapping. There are privacy laws. There are laws that say that you cannot profile minors for marketing purposes "to protect the children." There are laws that say that AOL doesn't have to release your personal information to any potential stalker who calls them up and asks for it, even if they pose as the hysterical mother of a missing child.
And who are you to decide, what the acceptable risk level is and what the absolute value a "statistically insignificant" ocurrence of an event should be.
You too are apparently of the kind that "just don't get it." Do you know what statistically insignificant means? By definition
. Guess what, the dumb, hysterical idiot users will demand a democratic vote on that one, and you can bet, that the dumb-a** of the world will NOT let the technological intelligentia [sic] determine that.
A democratic vote? Are you kidding? Do you actually believe that this country (since the context of this article is in the US) would actually create a nationwide referendum to vote on what is statisitaclly significant in the case of kidnapping? We can't even elect a president! The technological intelligentsia may not be making decisions on the laws of this country, but the political intelligentsia do make those decisions. Only they don't make them based on true circumstances, knowledge, or experience. They make them based on what the company that is funding their campaign wants. Which would you prefer?
The times were gurus can hide out behind the phony "benevolent dictatorship" argument are over. Do you have any proof that your dictatorship is benevolent ?
Benevolent dictatorship??? When did I become part of the ruling class? I assure you that any dictatorship of mine would be anything but benevolent. Off with your head!
-- Who will be the next master race ? The technological guru ? --
Master race? You really do belittle all the people who suffered and died at the hands of the Nazi's with that statement. That's disgusting.
About that last caller:
I'm apalued that one would place security at a $7/hour paying job, over the safety of a child. I actually find that sickening. That information should have been given out, piss on AOL's policy. Not saying give that info out to every Tom, Dick, and Harry...but come one now.
OK, so how do you determine which Tom, Dick, or Harry you should give that info out to?
And I also am shocked about AOL's poilcy on that. I mean, they see no problem in using your personal information to send you spam out the ass. But as soon as a child's safety is in question "sorry, that information is sacred, we can not give it out to anyone" No, it's they won't give it out for a pirce.
As much as I hate spam, you're way off the mark here. AOL has a spam bullseye painted on it's chest, that I agree. But even if AOL made available it's entire mailing list for free to spammers, selling a list of email addresses is still a far cry from giving out the true name and address of a user. And assuming that you could buy a list of all AOL subscribers names and addresses (for direct marketing purposes or whatever), there's no way that it would be correleated with user names SPECIFICALLY so that you couldn't track down the "19 year-old hottie" that you were chatting with last nite (or the "13 year old punk-ass" who jumped in in the middle and pretended to be your gay lover just for kicks).
Makes me think that parent shouldn't have called customer service, they should have called marketing and just bought the information.
No, if this were true then the parent should have called the police. AOL can't enforce the law against a "pedophile" (if that were the case in this instance) and neither can a mother.
And to everyone that says "the parents should have been watching their child" It's impossible to look over your child 24/7 let alone just bad parenting to do so.
I agree. That's why in addition to supervising children until they are old enough to make responsible decisions on their own, a parent should spend some time teaching, training, and otherwise educating their children on the fact that life is not a giant fuzzy bunny (or singing purple dinosaur). Life is deadly. It will eventually kill us all. If you screw around and do stupid things, you'll end up dead sooner than expected.
This was just a mother scared that her child was oen of the many that leave their house because someone in AOL convinced them to do, and they aren't seen again until someoen finds them in a ditch on some old hunting road 6 months later.
You don't know that's what this was, and neither did AOL. And I think that it's preposterous that you refer to "one of the many that leave their house because someone in AOL convinced them to do, and they aren't seen again until someoen finds them in a ditch on some old hunting road 6 months later." People who have this happen to them are in the far far far minority. Out of 100 million people (or more) using the internet in the United States, how many has this happened to? 20? 30? Even if it happened to 1000 people (one a day for the past 3 years, which I find highly unlikely), this is still less than 1/100000 of a single percent. That's statistically insignificant. You probably have a better chance of being hit by a car crossing the street than being kidnapped by an Internet stalker.
You (and this hysterical "mother") are another example of people who just don't get it. You fail to comprehend what the technology is and how it can be used and the realities that come with it. Then when it doesn't work the way that you feel it should you rail against it as if it were your personal playground. It's not your playground. It's not your child's playground. It's not a playground at all, and it certainly doesn't need to be censored, cleaned up, or otherwise nerfed for the "children's sake."
This bill was prompted by SPAM to the author's, Garcia, AOL account popping up porn before being caught by the AOL parental controls.
Hmm...let's see here. AOL Parental Controls = censorware/filterware. Pornographic SPAM gets past AOL Parental controls. Therefore, censorware cannot filter or block all objectionable content. So he decides that what's needed is to mandate the use of software that in his personal experience does not work to fix a problem that was first illustrated to him by the failure of that same software.
Well...that explains quite a few things about Texas anyway...
You missed the point. I don't want Windows on my PC. I don't want censorware on my PC. I don't want them on my PC because I disagree morally with what Microsoft and the companies who produce censorware stand for. I don't like that they market based on FUD instead of based on the merit of their products. I don't like that they try to mandate the purchase of their software.
I am a 28-year old single man who lives alone with his 4 computers. If it comes time to upgrade those computers, I would have to buy 4 copies of Windows (which I don't want or need) and 4 copies of the censorware (which I don't want or need) because some schmuck politician says so. Maybe the censorware only adds $10 to the price of each PC, but why should I have to buy it in the first place? Why should the government be allowed to force me to buy that software and support a company or group of companies that are founded upon an idealogy that I oppose?
Or even more interesting, what if I want to order systems with Linux pre-installed and avoid the Windows licensing fees altogether. Under this law, I wouldn't be able to because filtering software doesn't exist for Linux.
If it were his personal emails that we were talking about, he could just as easily get an AOL account under some pseudonym. If it's not part of the government system, it's not really our property is it? So long as it's not paid for with government money.
This isn't *JUST* his personal email. There were quite a few senior US Government officials on this list. Dubby's new email policy doesn't just apply to his personal mail, it applies to the whole shebang.
The email message and its addressees were obtained by the New York Times. Under government regulations, White House emails form part of the federal presidential record and could be subject to subpoena.
Mr Bush's email address list included Don Evans, the Commerce Secretary, Andrew Card, White House Chief of Staff, Karl Rove, chief strategist, and Condoleezza Rice, National Security Adviser.
I've seen quite a few people who were talking about this issue like it was Dubby's personal email that he stopped using. The quotes above from the referenced article seem to indicate otherwise. I could understand it if he didn't want personal messages to become a matter of public record, but we're talking about communications with other government officials which SHOULD be part of the public record. What is he trying to hide?
The most interesting thing about Napster was its viral nature. The fact that where there was previously a single copy of a song available for download, there soon became 100 copies available for download. I experienced this the other night when I downloaded a single that had been stuck in my head all day long. It took me about 2 minutes to pull it from another user. I left my PC up overnite and when I woke up the next morning it had been downloaded 167 times. That's 167 more copies out there floating around, many of which are available for download.
There are still songs that are evading the filters either through misspellings or fudged naming. I find those files all the time because I rarely search on a full song title. The Wired article says that right now it's kinda hard to find anything. That makes sense. There are fewer results being returned that bypassed the filters. But in a week, those people who did find it will have it available for download, and the number of hits will increase dramatically. It's only a matter of time. And to be honest, neither the RIAA or Napster will be able to run fast enough to keep up with a million or more determined users.
Great idea. We'll compile a list of all of the affected class. Then we'll send them all emails to tell them about this new class-action suit against people who send out unsolicited bulk emails...
Oh...wait a minnit...
I can't believe that I'm apparently the first to point this out, but Nautilus 1.0 isn't officially released yet. There's supposed to be an official rollout announcement later this month.
With any luck, you'll be able to get it for your distro and/or platform at that time.
Till then, envy.
And don't give me the old argument that "I could get all the porn I wanted when I was three years old." Yeah, maybe so, but not at the public library you didn't.
Funny thing that. I remember getting hummers at the library when I was a kid. I was 13 and my "girlfriend" and I didn't have a supervision-free place to hang out, so we'd always meet at the Public Library. Then, when nobody was looking we'd sneak out back or into a bathroom or something and fool around.
Back in the day...anyway.
So should I whack my four-year-old daughter in the head every other day, or drop her off at the corner crack house once a month so that she will be tough enough to "survive"?
I think that you're being ridiculous in you assertion here. I was hurt plenty when I was growing up, and I turned out OK. My parents would smack my fingers when I reached for a hot pan on the stove. They'd spank me if I did something more dangerous. When they weren't around and I was older, I played with fire and made homemade crossbows and all sorts of other dangerous things. I burned myself. I cut myself. I bruised myself. I fell off the roof of my best friend's garage.
Every time I hurt myself I learned from my mistake. I also learned not to be a total puss and that it's OK to take a few knocks every now and then. I learned that it's not only OK to get hurt physically and emotionally, but that it's IMPORTANT to get hurt physically and emotionally every once in a while. No matter how hard you try to prevent it it's going to happen sometimes sooner or later. It's important for kids to learn that when they're young so that they are prepared for it when it happens. Hardship breeds character. Parents in modern society breed whiney little bastards who are good for nothing but beating the secret boss on level 42 of Pokemon vs. Mario.
To be perfectly honest, most of the growing up that I did in my life I did when my parents weren't around. Mainly this was because I had the freedom to make my mistakes and learn from them. Sure, my parents were always there for me if I needed them. They provided an immeasurable amount of guidance and support. But it was only when I was away from their supervision that I really had the chance to apply their teaching to reality. This is the way that it has been for thousands of years. It's a good system, and it works reasonably well.
When I was growing up, we had this stereotype of the girls who went to the strict Catholic schools. They were all prim and proper because of the restrictive environment. But once they got out of school into the real world they were the most fun to party with. This is because they had never had a dose of reality. They weren't aware of the consequences of their actions, and they were so starved for what they had been deprived of that you could get them to do just about anything. And I do mean anything. You can raise your kids in a bubble world, but eventually they will break out of it. And they're usually better off having had exposure to the real world before they do.
Now we are living in the digital age. We can have total control over the digital space. We've become so spoiled by this that we (well...not me personally...us as a species) believe that we can impose a paradigm of digital control to the analog reality. It simply doesn't work that way. It won't work that way, and it CANNOT work that way.
Yes it does cost the game corps money.
They lose money on each console they sell. This happens for three reasons.
1) They produce consoles when it costs lots to make and market them (in the begining).
2) They need to get their console into your home.
3) They need you to buy the games for the console
Unfortunately Sega got the hardcore gamers with the DreamCast but those hardcore gamers are internet/computer savy. Those gamers did not buy as much software after the lauch smoke had cleared. I'm not saying that piracy was the only reason the system died...that lies also with Sega not getting the non hardcore gamers to buy the console and its games.
Bottom line: If you buy the dreamcast now and pirate the games, congratulations, you have cost Sega money.
Sega is an interesting example. They bailed on the Dreamcast hardware business so that they could concentrate on the software (very profitable) side of the business. The DC (from what I've seen) is a very capable console system.
However, it does seem to have been initially priced rather lower than the consoles from Sony and MS, even though it's still got comparable equipment (well, maybe not compared to the X-box). It almost looks as if Sega made a mistake by pricing the unit too low and losing too much on the initial sales. Still, they've produced and sold millions of units. And when they decided to get out of the hardware business they cut the prices to move the rest of the units and thereby increase their potential market for the software.
To be honest, Sony is probably more responsible for the death of the Dreamcast than anything else. I heard tons of people saying, "Yeah the Dreamcast is great, but the PS2 is just around the corner and it's even better, so I'm gonna wait!" Besides the fact that Sega really has trouble competing with the Sony PS line anyway.
Even still, the Dreamcast is far from dead (it even runs Linux!). They may not be making them anymore but there is still a substantial market for Dreamcast games. So Sega's not gonna take as big of a hit as you'd think (if at all).
Sounds like sales BS to me. If I'm not mistaken, the whole idea of the Internet was that it was a system that couldn't be broken when a single link went down. It doesn't matter how fast he can "shut a customer who was being attacked off from one backbone and re-route all traffic to and through another faster than a DDoS attacker could shift gears." If you can get out to the Internet, then packets can get routed back to you. Either that, or you filtering them somewhere upstream. Unless he's changing your IP address, which can cause no end of headaches.
Actually, it's kinda funny that he should use the phrase "faster than a DDoS attacker chan shift gears." The whole point about it being a DDoS is that it's not just one guy, it's a guy with an army of machines working at computer and network speed to flood your connection. As long as the target address doesn't change, it keeps firing packets that way.
Don't ever trust a salesperson for technical info...
I think that people overstate the cases of piracy. Is it wrong? Sure. Does it cost Sony (or MS, or whoever) money? Sure. Does it cost a company billions of dollars? Nope.
I understand that Sony sells these systems at a loss and then make up the difference and then some on the games. That's fine. But you characterizing it as a multibillion dollar hit is ridiculous. Sony makes money hand over fist with the PS and PS2 and games licensing. If they didn't, they wouldn't be in this business. Sony is not an impoverished company desperate to try anything to stem the financial bloodloss of piracy. They are a multi- tens of billions dollar international mega-corporation that is making obscene amounts of money off of this scheme. Sony wouldn't be making the PS2 if they weren't making a killing on them (by them, I mean the whole PS2 culture, as we know they don't make money on the console).
Let's be honest here. I know tons of people who have Playstations. I don't know anybody who has a hacked Playstation. I don't know anybody who has any pirated games. Certainly there are people who have a closet full of pirated games, but they are absolutely the minority. Most people wouldn't know how to pirate a game if their life depended on it. We (in the tech biz) tend to believe the inflated piracy figures simply due to our exposure to the technology. We know how trivially easy it is to dupe a game. We are by far the exception to the rule though.
Sony may lose several million dollars a year due to piracy. But it's not losing millions because Joe Blow rented a Playstation game and copied it on his CDR and plays it on a hacked system. They lose millions to the professional pirates who have duplication factories set up that do nothing but copy games 24x7 and sell them for $10 a piece. That's who they need to go after.
And BTW, the people who have the resources to pirate on a massive scale also have the resources to disable Sony's copy protection, or maintain their own pirate authentication server, or whatever else they want. The people that Sony is inconveniencing are the legitimate users.
Vast minority?
Yes, look at the whole Windows XP activation. It's the same thing. And you mention it like it was some sort of a hoax or something. I assure you that it is not. The Windows XP authenication does exist, and it is (partially) implemented in build 2446.
While it's certainly possible that this is a hoax, I wouldn't be surprised if it were not a hoax. Stop and think about it. Who was behind the DMCA that makes circumvention of this scheme illegal? Media companies. Record companies. COMPANIES LIKE SONY!
They asked for laws to protect just this kind of hairbrained scheme, and now that they've got it they're going to use it.
Wow. I think that I'm the first post here that says, "You can't hack it without violating the DMCA."
How do you like them apples? We could raise a generation of Federal criminals because they want to be able to play their cousin's copy of SuperNinjaJapaneseCartoonyKiller (can you tell that I don't play console games???) on their system.
Ignoring a clear violation of your legal rights by saying "I can hack around it" isn't going to cut it.
"Sure I hacked it, but I only hacked around it so that I could play my game at my friend's house, so it's not really a crime is it?"
"Yes son, it is a crime. And you will be prosecuted for it."
"BUT IT'S NOT FAAAAIIIR!!!"
"Son, there's no such thing as Fair Use anymore, so quit your whining and get into the squad car."
Are you kidding? They'll make up enough to cover the difference. Once you have subscribed to the official Sony Online Authorization Service and they're raking in their monthly fees, they'll be just fine.
Duh.
Yeah... it was outside out the territorial waters, however the platform actually belong to the British Ministry Of Defence, so it was property of the British Government... and they could argue that it still is, since they have never formally relinquished sovereignty.
If I'm not mistaken, they did "relinquish the platform" "to the seas," which is why he was able to lay claim to it to begin with and why it's held up in court.
If they really wanted to go to town, they could prevent HeavenCo from trading anywhere in the western world if they proved they're an accessory to organised crime, copyright infringement etc. Let's admit it, there's no other reason why HeavenCo exists, the free speech argument seems pretty fickle, since you would be protected in the US or any half decent country anyway.
You're kidding, right? I do live in the US and I can tell you, the "protections" offered are practically a sham to begin with. But then it becomes doubly so when you choose to exercise free speech by saying something about the government or big business (look at Scientology for an example). The laws in the US come down squarely on the side of business, not the individual. For all of our bragging and chest-beating about our freedoms, we don't have squat that big business doesn't give us or permit us to have. We're all slaves over here, most of us just don't know it yet.
But that's beside the point. What if you don't live in a "halfway decent" country? What if you live in China, or another country with a reputation of human rights violations for dissenters? What if you live somewhere that doesn't believe in free speech? What if you are an oppressed group of Kurdish rebels who want to use groupware like Lotus Notes and Quickplace to collaborate about planning the downfall of Saddam Hussein? OK, that's a funny picture, but the theory is right anyway. HavenCo seems like a reasonable option to me.
I think the owners of HeavenCo live in the US, the government could also pressure them for running illicit businesses.
And now you've already made the jump in logic from, "nobody needs privacy except criminals" (which is in itself flawed as all hell) to, "HavenCo is an illicit business." Frankly, I don't see how you can even begin to make the case that HavenCo is running an illicit business when they are providing a secure, private, CoLo service. There are companies here in the US that do the same thing. The only difference is that the laws of Sealand protect HavenCo from the abuses of the US Legal system. It's like incorporating your business in the state of Delaware because their laws are much more business friendly, even though your business is located in California.
What really disgusts me the most about your post is your ignorant assertion that encryption and privacy is for criminals. We all have a right to privacy. We all have a right to enforce that privacy via encryption, or a lock on our front door, or window blinds.
I could just as easily claim that because you (presumably) keep your front door locked when you aren't home that you are hiding something "illicit" inside. Maybe you have a meth lab in your basement. I dunno that, but it's obvious that you're hiding something.
What's that you say? You're merely trying to keep intruders out? You don't want someone to walk into your home while you're gone and steal your computer and TV equipment? Oh, well that's OK then. Just like it's OK for companies and individual to use secure methods to protect their company's data from intrusion or thievery.
I know, I was making a joke. Actually, it woulda been pretty funny to see them use a real IP address. There no doubt would have been a hoard of geeks descending upon whatever site was using that IP address in a Slashdot Effect-like flood.
It coulda been cool...