I am glad this will not be affecting me as I will not be buying any more consoles for the remainder of my life. It is time for them to die and just use the PC or a smartphone in my opinion.
You seem to think they won't be applying the exact same things to your PC and smartphone games. I would argue, you'll get no better deal on those platforms.
We must all look forward to the future where we do not own any of our technology.
Awesome, I look forward to not having to pay for stuff I don't own. Oh, wait, you mean a future where I'm still expected to pay, don't have any rights, and don't own anything. What's in it for me again?
This largely wipes out your right of first sale, and it props up the business model for the buggy whip makers.
Why should a video game company get a cut of used sales? Oh, right, because it's software, you licensed it, and have no rights.
This pretty much cements the fact that XBox One is something I will definitely not be interested in.
Right now I can buy used games, take a game over to a friends place, and sell my games -- and it's none of Microsoft or the game publisher's business. This basically says we will need their permission to do anything, and entrenches their own revenue stream.
There's no way in hell this leads to companies charging less for games, they'll just take their cut on both ends and expand their profits.
Sorry Microsoft, but I'll pass thanks. There's nothing about this that's good for consumers.
It's always worth finding the other option, and it's the only way these giant monopolizing bastards will ever learn: when their customers start leaving in the thousands.
Sadly, these days it's out of the hands of one set of giant monopolizing bastards and straight into the hands of another.
Since the big players have been steadily buying the small players, sooner or later, it's all the same people who own them. And where it's still multiple large corporations, they usually get together to agree on how to screw us over anyway.
In many market segments, the notion of a 'free market' is a laughable joke, since it's all controlled by a few multinationals.
Not suggesting we're there yet, but we're moving there. Obviously we haven't reached some self-sustaining chain reaction yet.
Deliberate or not, this is having the effect of the debris from collisions causing more collisions. If it gets worse or we don't find a way to deal with it, we might end up there.
Doesn't fly if it's not on the contract you signed.
Except the contract you signed says they can change things, and if you keep using it you've agreed.
There are no contracts the court would uphold that just allow them to add provisions as they see fit, whenever they want, without even telling the customer.
I wish that were true, and I really hope it is... but I'm pretty sure the courts have upheld EULAs in all their hideous glory, and have upheld the inclusion of waiving your right to join a class action suit.
And, as pointed out in the summary, this isn't a change to your contract, merely a surcharge, which somehow apparently magically sidesteps everything.
I fear the legal climate has changed to the point where AT&T holds all the cards here. So unless the FCC or someone gets involved, consumers likely have very little recourse.
Surely it's not Kessler syndrome until you have debris from one collision causing a further collision?
Well, if the missile impact (a collision) with the Chinese satellite caused an impact with the Russian reflector, you could argue we've already seen that.
I find it hard to argue that the debris from the Chinese satellite wasn't from a collision -- it was just a planned one (and possibly a very dumb idea in the first place).
There's not. This is blatantly illegal and a breach of contract.
Sadly, that contract says they can make a lot of changes whenever they want to -- like all modern contracts, the company basically says "we can do anything and you can eat shit".
Terms of service for a web site or a product pretty much all nowadays put the power entirely in the hands of companies to do as they please. And since corporate profits are the highest principle in the land, the courts have upheld that as perfectly fine.
If AT&T has decided they need to pad their bottom line by tacking on a little extra surcharge.. there's not a hell of a lot you can do about it. How many of us have received letters from our cell phone companies which more or less say "in order to keep corporate profits at record levels we will be increasing your costs"?
Nothing is illegal when you're a large company these days. And, since they've all updated their TOS to say you can't sue them in a class action suit, you don't have any recourse.
However if some enterprising drug dealers entice you into breaking the law and film it somehow it's okay.
And if you're already in the middle of breaking the law and your cohorts film you doing it... well, that's just life.
See, if nobody enticed him into doing anything, it isn't entrapment. It's being stupid enough to get caught on camera doing something illegal.
What, you think if this was real the mayor simply bowed to peer pressure and cajoling from a bunch of drug dealers he happened to be innocently hanging out with discussing fiscal policy?
Since it relies on placing a retro-reflector in a known position on the lunar surface, and understanding the physics behind it, you'd have had to have been there to do it.
Of course, for those who believe the moon landing was fake (or anything else which involves a blatant denial of science), no amount of refutation of their claims is ever going to work -- they're too invested in their beliefs to be swayed by facts.
There will still be a limited amount of energy production, from a finite number of devices, so it will still be a scarce resource. Read an economics book!
If you can make a large amount of cheap devices which all produce energy from relatively cheap inputs, you end up with something which is markedly less scarce, and potentially something you can produce yourself and eliminate the energy companies.
But usually people prefer to just dismiss without much thought, since the topic became taboo.
Largely because it's all been demonstrated to be either fake, a gross misunderstanding of what's happening, or so totally un-repeatable by anyone else as to be suspect.
Group-thinking is surely a fucked-up human characteristic.
Right, all those people who still think we live on a flat earth or that the world is only 6000 years old are the victim of groupthink.
Or, you know, if you make an extraordinary claim, you're gonna need proof.
Well, in the good scenario, an energy based economy which suddenly became free means we get unlimited cheap power and can do a great deal because it's no longer a scarce resource we're competing for.
In a bad scenario, the technology gets hidden away, or we still end up paying the same for everything, but the people selling the devices print money like mad fools by enforcing artificial scarcity with patents.
So their logic is that the scanner itself is not infringing (so companies like Sharp and Brother aren't liable) but the act of connecting the scanner to a network and having it send scanned documents as PDF files is infringing on a patent. That is what they believe makes the end consumer liable.
Well, then they can sue the companies who made the technology for scanners which integrate with your email system.
It's not like those customers went out and built that functionality themselves and in the process infringed on a patent, they used a feature implemented by the company who sold it to them. To the company who uses it, it's a black-box.
So either the scanner companies are liable for producing an infringing product, or the companies who make the email systems are (which would be insane), or this is bullshit. I'm voting for the latter.
This is a shake down for after-the-fact licensing of features provided to you by someone else.
I'm pretty sure this was just bullshit lawyering, not some principled stand of protest against the patent system.
This reads much more like shady asshole lawyers than any caped crusaders. Because good guys don't send threatening legal notices to innocent bystanders and demand settlement money.
I think a very simple law should be put into place which outlaws "NPEs." That would put a dent in the operations of these low-overhead trolls.
Even more so, don't let them directly sue consumers.
If I can walk into Wal Mart and buy a product, and you think that product infringes on your patent, you can sue the company who made it, but the consumer can't be sued.
This is a case of people being sued for using scanners -- technology we've had ready consumer access to for quite a long time.
Consumers should be indemnified from such things -- they didn't infringe on your patent, they probably have no idea what you're talking about. By the time you can walk into a retail store and buy a product it should be too damned late to sue consumers.
This is just shaking down people who are using stuff that has been readily available since the 90s, and which you can buy damned near anywhere -- what's a scanner cost these days? An all in one printer is what, $50?
If they haven't been filing patent lawsuits by now, they've essentially given up any rights to be suing anybody, let alone end users of technology which an be picked up pretty much anywhere.
"I find X to be strange" is another way of saying "I'm pretending that I live in a magical, X-free fantasy world."
No, it means quantum mechanics is some weird shit that most people can't really get a good handle on without a faulty analogy involving a cat.
And, if it skips past our understanding of time a little (like entangling two things which don't exist at the same time), then it gets into some really weird shit that most of us can't get a good handle on.
No, SAP wants them because the state mandates a quota of people with disabilities to all larger companies, and in exchange, the companies get various benefits from the state for every such employee.
No no no, the Germans are the only people who can culturally relate to autistic people -- the need for order and rigorous detail is appreciated there and viewed as a good thing.;-)
(And, for the record, I've worked with Germans before -- most of whom are awesome and will make their own jokes about their collective need for things to be in ordnung, I'm not dissing them.)
From that description, I'd guess that 95% of autistic people already work in the IT field.
Many of the people in IT probably score a little higher on the autistic spectrum, but there's a difference between that and full-on autism.
Lots of people will say they have Aspberger's to write off their eccentricities as well. But without a proper clinical diagnosis, those people are usually wrong.
Sometimes, people are just annoying jerks with an over-attention to detail, but that makes them neither autistic nor people with Asperger's. Once we accept that about ourselves, we can try to be slightly less annoying and work on some of those things.;-)
I think concerns about Oracle's long-term plans for MySQL are valid to ask.
If it isn't making Larry money, what did he buy it for and what is he planning to do with it?
Oracle isn't exactly a customer friendly company (just ask anyone who had an older Solaris machine when Oracle bought Sun and got told they needed to buy a support contract to even access docs), so I've always wondered why they would buy a free database and continue to develop it and give it away.
If I was choosing based purely on open-ness, something which doesn't have the chance of Oracle coming along and closing it otherwise strong-arming people would be a plus.
I guess it legitimately is FUD, but sometimes, there's valid reasons to mistrust such entities. And having dealt with Oracle over the years, they themselves are a very strong reason to be suspicious.
Slashdot Mirror
You seem to think they won't be applying the exact same things to your PC and smartphone games. I would argue, you'll get no better deal on those platforms.
Awesome, I look forward to not having to pay for stuff I don't own. Oh, wait, you mean a future where I'm still expected to pay, don't have any rights, and don't own anything. What's in it for me again?
This largely wipes out your right of first sale, and it props up the business model for the buggy whip makers.
Why should a video game company get a cut of used sales? Oh, right, because it's software, you licensed it, and have no rights.
This pretty much cements the fact that XBox One is something I will definitely not be interested in.
Right now I can buy used games, take a game over to a friends place, and sell my games -- and it's none of Microsoft or the game publisher's business. This basically says we will need their permission to do anything, and entrenches their own revenue stream.
There's no way in hell this leads to companies charging less for games, they'll just take their cut on both ends and expand their profits.
Sorry Microsoft, but I'll pass thanks. There's nothing about this that's good for consumers.
Sadly, these days it's out of the hands of one set of giant monopolizing bastards and straight into the hands of another.
Since the big players have been steadily buying the small players, sooner or later, it's all the same people who own them. And where it's still multiple large corporations, they usually get together to agree on how to screw us over anyway.
In many market segments, the notion of a 'free market' is a laughable joke, since it's all controlled by a few multinationals.
Not suggesting we're there yet, but we're moving there. Obviously we haven't reached some self-sustaining chain reaction yet.
Deliberate or not, this is having the effect of the debris from collisions causing more collisions. If it gets worse or we don't find a way to deal with it, we might end up there.
Except the contract you signed says they can change things, and if you keep using it you've agreed.
I wish that were true, and I really hope it is ... but I'm pretty sure the courts have upheld EULAs in all their hideous glory, and have upheld the inclusion of waiving your right to join a class action suit.
And, as pointed out in the summary, this isn't a change to your contract, merely a surcharge, which somehow apparently magically sidesteps everything.
I fear the legal climate has changed to the point where AT&T holds all the cards here. So unless the FCC or someone gets involved, consumers likely have very little recourse.
Well, if the missile impact (a collision) with the Chinese satellite caused an impact with the Russian reflector, you could argue we've already seen that.
I find it hard to argue that the debris from the Chinese satellite wasn't from a collision -- it was just a planned one (and possibly a very dumb idea in the first place).
And I believe you'll find they've added terms to the contract which prohibit you from doing that, and that the courts have upheld this,.
You have zero chance of a class action suit against them, because they already updated your terms of service to say you agree you can't do that.
Sadly, that contract says they can make a lot of changes whenever they want to -- like all modern contracts, the company basically says "we can do anything and you can eat shit".
Terms of service for a web site or a product pretty much all nowadays put the power entirely in the hands of companies to do as they please. And since corporate profits are the highest principle in the land, the courts have upheld that as perfectly fine.
If AT&T has decided they need to pad their bottom line by tacking on a little extra surcharge .. there's not a hell of a lot you can do about it. How many of us have received letters from our cell phone companies which more or less say "in order to keep corporate profits at record levels we will be increasing your costs"?
Nothing is illegal when you're a large company these days. And, since they've all updated their TOS to say you can't sue them in a class action suit, you don't have any recourse.
And if you're already in the middle of breaking the law and your cohorts film you doing it ... well, that's just life.
See, if nobody enticed him into doing anything, it isn't entrapment. It's being stupid enough to get caught on camera doing something illegal.
What, you think if this was real the mayor simply bowed to peer pressure and cajoling from a bunch of drug dealers he happened to be innocently hanging out with discussing fiscal policy?
Of course, even easier is the science behind the Lunar Laser Ranging experiment.
Since it relies on placing a retro-reflector in a known position on the lunar surface, and understanding the physics behind it, you'd have had to have been there to do it.
Of course, for those who believe the moon landing was fake (or anything else which involves a blatant denial of science), no amount of refutation of their claims is ever going to work -- they're too invested in their beliefs to be swayed by facts.
Well, hopefully there's an equivalent point in law for what they're doing -- because it has a lot of the same hallmarks as extortion.
If you can make a large amount of cheap devices which all produce energy from relatively cheap inputs, you end up with something which is markedly less scarce, and potentially something you can produce yourself and eliminate the energy companies.
I'd suggest you do the same.
Largely because it's all been demonstrated to be either fake, a gross misunderstanding of what's happening, or so totally un-repeatable by anyone else as to be suspect.
Right, all those people who still think we live on a flat earth or that the world is only 6000 years old are the victim of groupthink.
Or, you know, if you make an extraordinary claim, you're gonna need proof.
Well, in the good scenario, an energy based economy which suddenly became free means we get unlimited cheap power and can do a great deal because it's no longer a scarce resource we're competing for.
In a bad scenario, the technology gets hidden away, or we still end up paying the same for everything, but the people selling the devices print money like mad fools by enforcing artificial scarcity with patents.
Well, then they can sue the companies who made the technology for scanners which integrate with your email system.
It's not like those customers went out and built that functionality themselves and in the process infringed on a patent, they used a feature implemented by the company who sold it to them. To the company who uses it, it's a black-box.
So either the scanner companies are liable for producing an infringing product, or the companies who make the email systems are (which would be insane), or this is bullshit. I'm voting for the latter.
This is a shake down for after-the-fact licensing of features provided to you by someone else.
Except this is "help pay for my legal defense against this, and I won't sue you for that".
The suggestion of a lawsuit over an unrelated matter would definitely seem to be a threat, and would therefore be extortion, no?
So, "give me money to help defend against this lawsuit or I will file one against you" isn't extortion?
I'm not sure I agree with that interpretation.
Oh, it's not the only way to stop these guys ...
I'm pretty sure this was just bullshit lawyering, not some principled stand of protest against the patent system.
This reads much more like shady asshole lawyers than any caped crusaders. Because good guys don't send threatening legal notices to innocent bystanders and demand settlement money.
Assuming of course, they ever actually owned any patents, which I'm not certain they did in this case.
Even more so, don't let them directly sue consumers.
If I can walk into Wal Mart and buy a product, and you think that product infringes on your patent, you can sue the company who made it, but the consumer can't be sued.
This is a case of people being sued for using scanners -- technology we've had ready consumer access to for quite a long time.
Consumers should be indemnified from such things -- they didn't infringe on your patent, they probably have no idea what you're talking about. By the time you can walk into a retail store and buy a product it should be too damned late to sue consumers.
This is just shaking down people who are using stuff that has been readily available since the 90s, and which you can buy damned near anywhere -- what's a scanner cost these days? An all in one printer is what, $50?
If they haven't been filing patent lawsuits by now, they've essentially given up any rights to be suing anybody, let alone end users of technology which an be picked up pretty much anywhere.
No, it means quantum mechanics is some weird shit that most people can't really get a good handle on without a faulty analogy involving a cat.
And, if it skips past our understanding of time a little (like entangling two things which don't exist at the same time), then it gets into some really weird shit that most of us can't get a good handle on.
No no no, the Germans are the only people who can culturally relate to autistic people -- the need for order and rigorous detail is appreciated there and viewed as a good thing. ;-)
(And, for the record, I've worked with Germans before -- most of whom are awesome and will make their own jokes about their collective need for things to be in ordnung, I'm not dissing them.)
Many of the people in IT probably score a little higher on the autistic spectrum, but there's a difference between that and full-on autism.
Lots of people will say they have Aspberger's to write off their eccentricities as well. But without a proper clinical diagnosis, those people are usually wrong.
Sometimes, people are just annoying jerks with an over-attention to detail, but that makes them neither autistic nor people with Asperger's. Once we accept that about ourselves, we can try to be slightly less annoying and work on some of those things. ;-)
I think concerns about Oracle's long-term plans for MySQL are valid to ask.
If it isn't making Larry money, what did he buy it for and what is he planning to do with it?
Oracle isn't exactly a customer friendly company (just ask anyone who had an older Solaris machine when Oracle bought Sun and got told they needed to buy a support contract to even access docs), so I've always wondered why they would buy a free database and continue to develop it and give it away.
If I was choosing based purely on open-ness, something which doesn't have the chance of Oracle coming along and closing it otherwise strong-arming people would be a plus.
I guess it legitimately is FUD, but sometimes, there's valid reasons to mistrust such entities. And having dealt with Oracle over the years, they themselves are a very strong reason to be suspicious.