Way to conflate government run items with private business.
The correct analogy would be:
Do you like Disneyland? Disney could tear it down!
Do you like Big Mac's with lettuce? McDonald's could stop putting lettuce on Big Mac's!!!
Yes, EA can add DRM to all their games if they wish. And maybe the market won't care. If I care, I can: 1) Try to convince others that this is a bad thing. 2) Start my own business and compete with EA 3) Buy games from competitors who do not include DRM in their games 4) Write my own games 5) Take up a different hobby
Has our society become so entitlement-based that we feel some sort of moral wrong has been committed when a company releases a game with a distribution model we don't like? Apparently.
Choosing not to participate will magically remove the problem if a majority of people think it is a significant problem.
I would hate to live in a world where the complaints of a minority of people resulted in the whims of that minority being enforced.
1) Simcity 5 includes a single-player option....that requires connection to their servers. This would be like if the Halo campaign required connection to Microsoft's servers.
2) The multi-player options are server-based rather than client based. This limits the lifetime of the game (is EA really going to be running SimCity servers in 10 years?) This limits playability (can't play on a plane, at the cabin, etc)
3) EA claims that the multi-player aspects of the game could only be created with a server based game. This does not at all seem to be the case
4) The server-based connection is terrible, even though there should really be minimal data being exchanged.
5) Numerous other companies have failed at this (quite spectacularly, and recently). They should have been better prepared.
That doesn't work without a server authority, so that needs always-online to work. Otherwise you'd need one person to host, and never stop. So this is logical.
No, it isn't logical. They could have written the game so that when the host disconnects, a new person is elected as the new host. It may have been somewhat more complicated, but would have saved them massive amounts of required infrastructure and support.
I do agree they didn't just tack on "always online" as a form of DRM. I seem to recall that EA is going to make an online component integral to all of their games. It seems they are doing so even when it would be possible to create the same game without a server-based online requirement.
I do not believe they are doing this in the interest of the consumer.
What really annoys me is the absolute limit of what I can do to these bastards is not give them money. There needs to be a way to take money away from companies that deliver exceptionally bad products.
There is. Exceptionally bad products don't recoup the cost of development, which leads to the company losing money.
Oh, wait, you want a way to take money away from companies that make products that you personally feel are bad.
Well, I'd like a way to take money away from people who mod stupid comments on Slashdot as "Insightful".
Thankfully, I don't think either of us will get our way.
WTF are you talking about? The Magnusson-Moss anti-tying provisions are in regards to voiding a warranty for the use of third-party components (i.e. Honda refusing to warranty your car if you use non-Honda parts).
Requiring a game to have online access has nothing to do with Magnusson-Moss.
EA has done nothing illegal here.
And why the heck would I waste the courts time (and public money) over a video game? It seems a more sensible, mature response to just not buy the video game in the first place. If I was particularly upset about the practice, I'd exercise my free-speech rights and attempt to convince the market that this is a bad idea.
Sounds like a great business model to have, actually - I wonder why kiosks don't do it now...
Cause when I go to check out, I'm certainly going to notice those charges, and won't be beat and in a hurry to get to my room. At that point I'll hunt down a clerk/manager and refuse to pay for items they tried to sneak by.
Many companies are wise enough to realize that trying to trick customers into paying for things they don't want is a stupid business plan. I really don't get why software installers haven't figured this out.
Personally, if an installer pre-selects stupid search toolbars / add-ons / extras that have nothing to do with the software I'm installing, I typically just hit cancel and go find some other piece of software that will do what I want.
Also, it's almost self-fulfilling that the kiosk's will be faster.
Why do people stand in line to talk to the single check-in person at the airport when there are several available self check-in terminals? Typically because they have some issue that the terminal can't deal with (e.g. unconventional luggage, specific seating requirements, lost booking code, etc).
The kiosk's handle the 95% of "I just need to perform the standard tasks". The poor desk jockeys are left with the 5% of exception cases. That combined with the fact that a company can put in a dozen kiosk's for less than the price of a single employee makes it the much faster choice.
a) yes, the carbon footprint of the car should be included, but divided over the total number of trips it can make during it's lifetime. After all, the asparagus can only be used once...the car multiple times.
b) yes, we need to eat...but the point is we don't need to eat food imported from halfway across the globe.
c) no, the car doesn't need to be produced, but without massive changes to our economy, industrial base, and standard of living....we are currently stuck with a fairly significant number of fossil fuel powered vehicles.
Sure, there's a bunch of quotes from non-geek celebs, but there is also plenty of geek cred on code.org's front page:
I see endorsements from: Bill Gates Mark Zuckenberg Tim O'Reilly Eric Schmidt Gabe Newell Salman Khan Mehran Sahami Jack Dorsey Drew Houston Ed Lazowska Max Levchin Rob Glaser Yishan Wong Vanessa Hurst All of whom I would guess have written at least a few line's of code in their lives.
I don't get Winer's problem. Some people code because they love it. Some because they are exceptionally good at it. Some because it pays the bills.
All of these are valid reasons to become a programmer. Winer's idea of "if you don't love programming, we don't want you here" is what I find soulless and condescending.
Ironically, in Winer's own article, he extolls his awe and amazement over professional basketball players, even though he is unable to play basketball very well himself. He then goes on to complain about non-programmers expressing their awe and amazement over computer programming...seriously WTF?!?
Natural gas is the future... Wind is the future... Geothermal is the future Solar is the future... Nuclear (fission) is the future... Nuclear (fusion) is the future... Embrace all of the above.
This is a zombie problem, not a werewolf problem.
i.e. We need a shotgun approach, not a silver bullet.
No, it means the US has rich kids receiving a good education, and poor kids receiving a poor education.
No, if you RTFA, it means that rich kids in the US receive a good education, and poor kids in the US perform pretty much the same as poor kids everywhere else.
Education is not a magical panacea for poverty. Other factors (e.g. drug use, violence in the home, alcoholism, teen pregnancy, etc, etc, etc...) also contribute heavily towards a lack of educational achievement for students from lower socioeconomic backgrounds.
This is not a problem that can be fixed in the schools alone, regardless of the amount of money we throw at education.
Hmm, is the study arguing then that these students should be excluded? If so, what is the basis? Are they not really in the country?
No...the study is arguing that these results should not necessarily be used to determine education policy.
The Dept. of Education has gotten flak that US students do not perform as well as their international peers, and should introduce school reforms in order to fix this problem. This study indicates that the root cause of this performance gap is socioeconomic factors, which may not be fixable solely by a change to the schools.
The study also indicates that certain portions of the test were weighted such that students in other countries did better than the US (higher weighting on number properties vs. algebra for instance), and that a larger % of US students were chosen from schools in a poor socioeconomic district than the national average.
But all this is in the FA, so I don't quite understand your comment.....
Also keep in mind the US had an interesting thing about 70ish years ago.... the US however we sifted thru all of our able bodied men and sent them off to fight leaving behind a less healthy group
So did Canada. Mind explaining the discrepancy?
Oh,wait, I found it....it's cause your argument is full of crap.
You'll learn what it's like soon enough. Greece has already started.
Except if you live in Canada. Or Sweden. Or Norway. Or actually most of the countries in that list.
The debt of most of those countries is significantly less than that of Greece (or the USA for that matter), yet they have a similar standard of living, free basic health care, and fairly reasonable job security.
On May 18, 1927, Andrew Kehoe bombed an elementary school in Bath Township, Michigan, killing 38 children and 6 adults. He used a combination of dynamite and pyrotol.
The point I'm trying to make is twofold: 1) People can commit these kind of acts without any kind of firearms whatsoever. Rather than spending time, money, resources on costly and ineffective control measures, we should be spending this on identifying and treating individuals suffering from mental instabilities so they don't attempt this sort of act in the first place.
2) This sort of thing has happened for a long time. I'm certain some people are going to try and make a connection between this act and violent media, video games, refined sugar, etc, but the 1927 disaster indicates these things aren't always a factor in this sort of act.
"we feel this was a terrible idea and are sorry we used to think otherwise."
I understand the first part of this sentence, but I'm completely baffled by the second part.
Who is doing this saying? The government? It was a different government at the time Turing was convicted. So are they trying to say: "we (the current government) feel this was a terrible idea and are sorry previous governments used to feel otherwise"
Why should a current government apologize for the acts of people completely unrelated to them?
assuming that just because I didn't list them means they don't exist and I'm therefore wrong.
No, I'll assume you are wrong because now that you have listed them, you are, in fact, wrong:
Here's a few items you have gotten incorrect:
1) BWC is currently listed as an active treaty on the US department of state's website here. What makes you think the US withdrew?
2) I can't find any evidence that the US is exempt from the CWC. The US CWC website indicates no such exemption, and neither does wikipedia, nor the UN website on the treaty. Care to provide some evidence?
3) Withdrawing from a treaty is not the same thing as breaking it. The US gave 6 months notice of the intent to withdraw from the ABM treaty as permitted by the terms of the treaty. Saying that's the same as breaking a treaty is the equivalent to saying not paying your car lease is the same as completing the lease and returning the car.
Treaties that the US has not signed have nothing to do with the discussion, but nice attempt at moving the goalposts.
Or you could actually RTFA, where the author provides actual evidence that worker income & employment have not increased as fast as output over the past 60 years.
How do you account for the fact that we are producing more than ever with fewer workers?
But don't let silly things like facts get in the way of your message.
Fukishima was just fine, until it was hit by a once-in-a-thousand-years disaster.... tornado, flood, or earthquake? Or the plants in Minnesota don't get hit with it, maybe your plant in Oregon does. Or Vermont. Or Indiana.....
WTF? Fukishima was not "just fine", nor was it hit by a once-in-a-thousand-years disaster. It was a poorly maintained plant, with a history of safety issues. Heck, in 2007 and 2008, TEPCO and the AEC released reports citing concerns over how the plant would handle a tsunami, or an earthquake of magnitude 7.0 or higher.
Fukishima was not a natural disaster. It was a man-made one due to mismanagement, self-interest, and greed.
Oh yeah, and if there are 7.0+ earthquakes or tsunami-type flooding in Minnesota or Indiana, we have much more serious concerns than a nuclear meltdown, as apparently the Apocalypse has occurred.
Slashdot Mirror
Way to conflate government run items with private business.
The correct analogy would be:
Do you like Disneyland? Disney could tear it down!
Do you like Big Mac's with lettuce? McDonald's could stop putting lettuce on Big Mac's!!!
Yes, EA can add DRM to all their games if they wish. And maybe the market won't care. If I care, I can:
1) Try to convince others that this is a bad thing.
2) Start my own business and compete with EA
3) Buy games from competitors who do not include DRM in their games
4) Write my own games
5) Take up a different hobby
Has our society become so entitlement-based that we feel some sort of moral wrong has been committed when a company releases a game with a distribution model we don't like? Apparently.
Choosing not to participate will magically remove the problem if a majority of people think it is a significant problem.
I would hate to live in a world where the complaints of a minority of people resulted in the whims of that minority being enforced.
Sure...but the complaints seem be more that:
1) Simcity 5 includes a single-player option....that requires connection to their servers.
This would be like if the Halo campaign required connection to Microsoft's servers.
2) The multi-player options are server-based rather than client based.
This limits the lifetime of the game (is EA really going to be running SimCity servers in 10 years?)
This limits playability (can't play on a plane, at the cabin, etc)
3) EA claims that the multi-player aspects of the game could only be created with a server based game. This does not at all seem to be the case
4) The server-based connection is terrible, even though there should really be minimal data being exchanged.
5) Numerous other companies have failed at this (quite spectacularly, and recently). They should have been better prepared.
No, it isn't logical. They could have written the game so that when the host disconnects, a new person is elected as the new host. It may have been somewhat more complicated, but would have saved them massive amounts of required infrastructure and support.
I do agree they didn't just tack on "always online" as a form of DRM. I seem to recall that EA is going to make an online component integral to all of their games. It seems they are doing so even when it would be possible to create the same game without a server-based online requirement.
I do not believe they are doing this in the interest of the consumer.
There is. Exceptionally bad products don't recoup the cost of development, which leads to the company losing money.
Oh, wait, you want a way to take money away from companies that make products that you personally feel are bad.
Well, I'd like a way to take money away from people who mod stupid comments on Slashdot as "Insightful".
Thankfully, I don't think either of us will get our way.
WTF are you talking about? The Magnusson-Moss anti-tying provisions are in regards to voiding a warranty for the use of third-party components (i.e. Honda refusing to warranty your car if you use non-Honda parts).
Requiring a game to have online access has nothing to do with Magnusson-Moss.
EA has done nothing illegal here.
And why the heck would I waste the courts time (and public money) over a video game? It seems a more sensible, mature response to just not buy the video game in the first place. If I was particularly upset about the practice, I'd exercise my free-speech rights and attempt to convince the market that this is a bad idea.
Suing them is just childish...
Cause when I go to check out, I'm certainly going to notice those charges, and won't be beat and in a hurry to get to my room. At that point I'll hunt down a clerk/manager and refuse to pay for items they tried to sneak by.
Many companies are wise enough to realize that trying to trick customers into paying for things they don't want is a stupid business plan. I really don't get why software installers haven't figured this out.
Personally, if an installer pre-selects stupid search toolbars / add-ons / extras that have nothing to do with the software I'm installing, I typically just hit cancel and go find some other piece of software that will do what I want.
Also, it's almost self-fulfilling that the kiosk's will be faster.
Why do people stand in line to talk to the single check-in person at the airport when there are several available self check-in terminals? Typically because they have some issue that the terminal can't deal with (e.g. unconventional luggage, specific seating requirements, lost booking code, etc).
The kiosk's handle the 95% of "I just need to perform the standard tasks". The poor desk jockeys are left with the 5% of exception cases. That combined with the fact that a company can put in a dozen kiosk's for less than the price of a single employee makes it the much faster choice.
A couple of points:
a) yes, the carbon footprint of the car should be included, but divided over the total number of trips it can make during it's lifetime. After all, the asparagus can only be used once...the car multiple times.
b) yes, we need to eat...but the point is we don't need to eat food imported from halfway across the globe.
c) no, the car doesn't need to be produced, but without massive changes to our economy, industrial base, and standard of living....we are currently stuck with a fairly significant number of fossil fuel powered vehicles.
Sure, there's a bunch of quotes from non-geek celebs, but there is also plenty of geek cred on code.org's front page:
I see endorsements from:
Bill Gates
Mark Zuckenberg
Tim O'Reilly
Eric Schmidt
Gabe Newell
Salman Khan
Mehran Sahami
Jack Dorsey
Drew Houston
Ed Lazowska
Max Levchin
Rob Glaser
Yishan Wong
Vanessa Hurst
All of whom I would guess have written at least a few line's of code in their lives.
I don't get Winer's problem. Some people code because they love it. Some because they are exceptionally good at it. Some because it pays the bills.
All of these are valid reasons to become a programmer. Winer's idea of "if you don't love programming, we don't want you here" is what I find soulless and condescending.
Ironically, in Winer's own article, he extolls his awe and amazement over professional basketball players, even though he is unable to play basketball very well himself. He then goes on to complain about non-programmers expressing their awe and amazement over computer programming...seriously WTF?!?
WTF does this stupid argument keep coming up?
Natural gas is the future...
Wind is the future...
Geothermal is the future
Solar is the future...
Nuclear (fission) is the future...
Nuclear (fusion) is the future...
Embrace all of the above.
This is a zombie problem, not a werewolf problem.
i.e. We need a shotgun approach, not a silver bullet.
No, if you RTFA, it means that rich kids in the US receive a good education, and poor kids in the US perform pretty much the same as poor kids everywhere else.
Education is not a magical panacea for poverty. Other factors (e.g. drug use, violence in the home, alcoholism, teen pregnancy, etc, etc, etc...) also contribute heavily towards a lack of educational achievement for students from lower socioeconomic backgrounds.
This is not a problem that can be fixed in the schools alone, regardless of the amount of money we throw at education.
No...the study is arguing that these results should not necessarily be used to determine education policy.
The Dept. of Education has gotten flak that US students do not perform as well as their international peers, and should introduce school reforms in order to fix this problem. This study indicates that the root cause of this performance gap is socioeconomic factors, which may not be fixable solely by a change to the schools.
The study also indicates that certain portions of the test were weighted such that students in other countries did better than the US (higher weighting on number properties vs. algebra for instance), and that a larger % of US students were chosen from schools in a poor socioeconomic district than the national average.
But all this is in the FA, so I don't quite understand your comment.....
It also has one of the largest debts as percentage of GDP, which is not a good thing.
So did Canada. Mind explaining the discrepancy?
Oh,wait, I found it....it's cause your argument is full of crap.
Except if you live in Canada. Or Sweden. Or Norway. Or actually most of the countries in that list.
The debt of most of those countries is significantly less than that of Greece (or the USA for that matter), yet they have a similar standard of living, free basic health care, and fairly reasonable job security.
+1 Sensible.
Yes, we should try to learn from history:
On May 18, 1927, Andrew Kehoe bombed an elementary school in Bath Township, Michigan, killing 38 children and 6 adults. He used a combination of dynamite and pyrotol.
The point I'm trying to make is twofold:
1) People can commit these kind of acts without any kind of firearms whatsoever. Rather than spending time, money, resources on costly and ineffective control measures, we should be spending this on identifying and treating individuals suffering from mental instabilities so they don't attempt this sort of act in the first place.
2) This sort of thing has happened for a long time. I'm certain some people are going to try and make a connection between this act and violent media, video games, refined sugar, etc, but the 1927 disaster indicates these things aren't always a factor in this sort of act.
I understand the first part of this sentence, but I'm completely baffled by the second part.
Who is doing this saying? The government? It was a different government at the time Turing was convicted. So are they trying to say:
"we (the current government) feel this was a terrible idea and are sorry previous governments used to feel otherwise"
Why should a current government apologize for the acts of people completely unrelated to them?
No, I'll assume you are wrong because now that you have listed them, you are, in fact, wrong:
Here's a few items you have gotten incorrect:
1) BWC is currently listed as an active treaty on the US department of state's website here. What makes you think the US withdrew?
2) I can't find any evidence that the US is exempt from the CWC. The US CWC website indicates no such exemption, and neither does wikipedia, nor the UN website on the treaty. Care to provide some evidence?
3) Withdrawing from a treaty is not the same thing as breaking it. The US gave 6 months notice of the intent to withdraw from the ABM treaty as permitted by the terms of the treaty. Saying that's the same as breaking a treaty is the equivalent to saying not paying your car lease is the same as completing the lease and returning the car.
Treaties that the US has not signed have nothing to do with the discussion, but nice attempt at moving the goalposts.
Or you could actually RTFA, where the author provides actual evidence that worker income & employment have not increased as fast as output over the past 60 years.
How do you account for the fact that we are producing more than ever with fewer workers?
But don't let silly things like facts get in the way of your message.
+1 Funny
Who cares about that? Where is the moon getting it's power from?!?!
Yep....that's the real reason the Apollo astronauts went to the moon. Replace the batteries.
WTF? Fukishima was not "just fine", nor was it hit by a once-in-a-thousand-years disaster. It was a poorly maintained plant, with a history of safety issues. Heck, in 2007 and 2008, TEPCO and the AEC released reports citing concerns over how the plant would handle a tsunami, or an earthquake of magnitude 7.0 or higher.
Fukishima was not a natural disaster. It was a man-made one due to mismanagement, self-interest, and greed.
Oh yeah, and if there are 7.0+ earthquakes or tsunami-type flooding in Minnesota or Indiana, we have much more serious concerns than a nuclear meltdown, as apparently the Apocalypse has occurred.
Photo editing.