Moral relativism is inescapable, even by those that reject it.
The Israeli-Palestinian situation is a prime example. If you make a claim that one side is right and the other is wrong, you are saying the weight of crimes on one side outweigh the crimes of the other (and this is assuming there are only two sides, which there aren't). Some immorality is worse than other immorality. Congratulations! You are now a moral relativist! Moral absolutionism is only practiced by corpses.
Nowadays, I would totally agree with the statement. They aren't a monopoly in operating systems anymore. Not that they shouldn't be punished for previous bad behavior, and they haven't yet been punished for it in the US (the handslap the US government gave them doesn't count). The EU seems to be taking concrete steps toward punishing Microsoft for their past bad behaviors, and they've proven they have the guts to stand up to MS's whining over the issue.
The fact that Vista is an almost total failure is pretty much proof positive that Microsoft has lost most if not all of their monopoly power. Your "fixed" version of my sentence fits Microsoft's current market position pretty damn well, actually. They're the biggest fish in the pond, but the other fish are getting a lot bigger, and Micrsoft can't act with impunity anymore.
They don't have a monopoly in MP3 players. They may be the most popular, but they certainly aren't the only maker of them. I have owned several Macs (I'm typing this on a Macbook Pro) and I just bought an MP3 player. Not an iPod, though. An iPod wasn't even on the list of possible purchases, and I had a lot to choose from (for the record, I ended up buying a SanDisk player).
I don't understand the claim that the iPod is a monopoly. It's certainly the most popular. Its popularity means that it's a force in the marketplace, but it's by no means a monopoly.
I don't disagree that this particular practice by Apple is completely unethical, but that doesn't mean it's illegal. If you don't like iPods or iTunes, there are plenty of supported players out there, most of them with more features than the iPod. If the iPod is the only mp3 player you find acceptable, and you still don't like how they're doing business, perhaps you should re-evaluate your standards.
...of me ever getting cable again. I don't even like YouTube, but I'd rather be subjected to that than ever give these people another dime. The worst ad-infested, DRM laden video downloads are way, WAY better than this. I'd rather never watch a video ever again than allow that into my home. I can barely believe they're going to try this crap. Sent this to my Congresscritter. You should too.
Or perhaps it's a riskier activity, in part, because fewer people associate the activity of driving with risk. People take far more care when packing glassware than they do driving despite the fact that the latter is far more dangerous.
I would agree. I've got the "security mindset". I used to work in security on the consulting side, trying to fix up people's stuff. Thought about getting into research, but the culture of the security community at the time (right before 9/11) drove me away before I could. A kind of self-hating trifecta of ex-military intelligence grunts looking at disdain at anyone that didn't come out of the armed services, genius technical boffins with all the interpersonal skills of Rain Man, or wild-eyed "Information must be free, damn the consequences" idealogues. Since I don't fit into any one of those stereotypes, I made a lot more enemies than friends (though I did make plenty enough friends, and there are many exceptions to the rule), and decided once it was nigh impossible to find work after 9/11, that a change in direction wasn't such a bad thing after all.
Now I don't make nearly as much money, but I'm both a lot happier, and my work is a lot more helpful than it was when I was a part of the "security community". Working with little companies, a security mindset can go a very long way. I don't worry about intrusion detection or policy enforcement, or priviledges, or password strength, or encryption keys even a quarter as much as I had to before. Not when no one I deal with has a backup system that actually backs anything up (if they have a backup system) when I first walk in the door, or a simple switch of web browsers or e-mail clients will eliminate the lion's share of reasonable attack vectors into their network. Not when they don't understand the concept of patching their operating system. Not when a hands on explanation of what a phishing e-mail exactly is, what they look like, and what not to do.
Not that the more complicated stuff doesn't ever come up, because it does, and often I bring it up. I've set up a lot of VPNs lately, stopping people from what they had been doing, which is exposing their file servers directly to the outside world, with no encryption or really ANYTHING other than bad passwords stopping entry. Passwords is a big pet peeve of mine. So many of my customers have passwords that so many people know, or are trivial to guess, that they've started prefacing telling me what a new password is with "I know you're going to hate me" when they tell me the password is something that every employee that has ever been there knows, including the ones that hate the owner's guts. However, I choose to see that as a glass half full. They may not be doing the right thing, but THEY KNOW they're not doing the right thing, and have chosen to continue doing things a different way. Before I showed up and spoke to them in language they understood and took the time to explain how things work, the jargon and fearmongering of the public infosec community (including antivirus software companies) helped them nil. Maybe that kind of stuff works better in bigger organizations (heck, maybe it's the only thing that has any effect in big organizations). Perhaps that's why I couldn't handle bigger organizations and have found a lot more success with the personal touch.
FIOS is no bed of roses. The fiber optic modem/router they ship to you was intentionally set up by Verizon to not allow you to change the internal address space ever. You're stuck on 192.168.1.1 and if you relied on that being changeable, well, tough luck. If you do endpoint-to-endpoint VPNs, you're pretty much screwed if one of those ends has a Verizon FIOS modem at the other end. It can be worked around, but it makes life a living hell for people like me who try to both work with clients over a VPN between my office and theirs (I need access to the entire local network so I can support the machines, saving them from paying travel time) or for computer-stupid employees who want to connect to the office from their gods-know-what at home, and a VPN client setup just plain doesn't work, because it's too complicated to get the kind of broad access you can get with a router-to-router VPN. (Yes, I know YOU, Mr. Reader may be able to do it and maintain it, but Joe Company paying me $80/hour because they can't afford a full time computer guy won't be able to deal with it)
FIOS is fine enough for what it is, but being forced to move over to FIOS will make my life (and the lives of a lot of people willing to pay for a service that allows us to use our own router) pretty fucking miserable.
[blockquote]This is only a valid attack vector in the highly unlikely occasion that you have access to the powered on system, and even then it's somewhat dubious as to whether you'll get the data you need off of it.[/blockquote]
One word: laptops
Heck, I'll even throw in another word for free: cleaners
If your work is sensitive enough that you need to encrypt entire volumes, it would be reasonable to expect that there are people out there willing to take the time to target you for a theft of that data. The special circumstances required aren't particularly onerous.
6) No Region lock - unlike most consoles, Dreamcast didn't burp when you played games from Japan.
Wrong. The Dreamcast did have region locking. However, it could be defeated with software you ran before putting the Japanese game in. A lot easier to get past, sure, but it wasn't lock-free.
The odd thing? Holland is soccer nuts, so what could go wrong with pushing lots of ads around soccer matches? It works in the US right?
Televised soccer just doesn't happen in the US, unless you're talking about niche channels that cater to immigrant/expatriot populations within the US, or the World Cup, which has lately actually been getting some play here. The closest major league soccer team to me went to the finals and not a person that wasn't a soccer obsessive even knew about it, except for a brief mention on local news that they were going, and a mention that they lost.
The sports that do get broadcast widely are far more commercial-friendly. Basketball, American football, and baseball (not really counting hockey anymore) all have frequent breaks where commercials can be inserted easily.
That, while marginally more appropriate, is still way too flawed to be of any use. If we were talking about a console game, or some non-online PC game it would be a far better analogy, but it's of no real relevance with regard to a MMO.
If Scribners is unsavory to the point of disgust I can easily (and often with far less expense) obtain Stephen King's work on the secondhand book market. Scribners receives no money whatsoever from my purchase. They don't even know I have it. There's no difference between that book and a copy I could have bought at Borders, aside from the secondhand book probably being a bit beat up. While I don't have a direct link to back this up, I'm quite certain I've seen book publishers decry secondhand bookstores and libraries as tantamount to outright theft, but they can't stop me reading that book as long as it holds together. If I really feel like supporting Stephen King I can send his literary agent a check for the difference, though whether they'd accept it is another matter entirely. This is the same way normal console games work.
With MMOs, it totally breaks down. I can't play WoW in any fashion without a direct relationship with Blizzard. If I stop paying them, I am totally prevented from playing their game. If Blizzard does stuff I don't like, then there is no other method to get the content through someone else or secondhand. Well, I tell a lie, there are "player run" unofficial servers that reverse-engineer it, but they don't work worth a damn, and Blizzard goes after their operators when they find them (as they have every right to do).
Re: the other stuff
What you're saying is all well and good as far as it goes. Yes, theoretically an organized protest would do something. That is, if it ever actually worked in practice. From fairly long experience, the only statistic MMO companies care about are subscription numbers. You can have as many people in an organized protest on the forums or in-game over an issue, and the only effect you're going to see is your forum thread locked/deleted, or pissed off other users yelling at you to stop lagging out . When people start cancelling accounts, that's when things actually get changed. Blizzard is no exception. On several occasions, really bad ideas by Blizzard were not stopped until lots of people started cancelling accounts and posting links to their screenshots as proof. And frankly, even when subscription numbers plummet, sometimes MMO companies just ignore it. Just look at the pathetic wretch that is Star Wars: Galaxies today, and see its sordid history.
So, you're claiming that good methods for effecting change in one sphere (government and social groups) are effective methods for change in all spheres, and that's just not true. Not to mention that the book-video game analogy is so deeply flawed it would take more time than I have to go into it. How is that not exactly what you're claiming other people do, but the other way around? How about using the approach that works best in the circumstances.
Just because you are correct when you complain that people who won't use any tool but a hammer break way too many things unneccesarily doesn't mean you're any less wrong when you try using a screwdriver to bang a nail in.
3. Therefore people should give up WOW that brings them happiness because there is a problem with how it is provided.
Yes, they should, because there are an awful lot of things out there that one can do that are provided in ways that aren't objectionable. I'm not saying "go read a book you lazy fat fuck" or "shut up, I'm trying to farm more here and your whining is giving me a headache". You can complain as much as you want to Blizzard, but as long as you are unwilling to stop paying them until they change things so you don't find them objectionable your complaints are sound and fury, signifying nothing, and they know it. If you actually want a change, you have to be willing to put your money where your mouth is, because your money is your only leverage in your business relationship with Blizzard. I personally cancelled a month ago for other reasons, but this information nails the door shut on me paying Blizzard money as long as stuff like this is occuring.
This is not life or death. This is not real world governance. I'm not suggesting you leave America if you don't like it here. I'm not saying that if you don't like your job you should just quit and find another one. This is a video game. Finding another MMO to take up your excess time is a matter of $50 at worst, since just about all of them worth playing give free trial periods. Your friends that you met in WoW will still be your friends when you stop playing if they are real friends and not merely aquaintances. There is such a thing as instance messenger and voice chat. Gain some perspective.
No, but now it means that the people who can and do go through the bother of watching what it is doing can't report that to the rest of us. Kinda like open source software. I personally can't audit the code, but other people can and do, and they can report problems. With Warden as it used to be, no, I wasn't likely to watch exactly what it did myself, but other people could and were reporting on what stuff it was looking at. Now no one can. That is a bridge too far for me, and I'd be cancelling now if I hadn't already cancelled for other reasons, and I certainly won't be going back ever now that this has been made known. Stopping gold spammers and botters is all well and good, but this goes way too far. If you're happy to see me and people like me stay away, well I'm happier to be gone now than I was 30 minutes ago, so everyone's happy. Ain't that nice?
Not to mention that, given the electoral college system and living in a state which has the chance of voting Republican hovering right around the chance that I, personally, am targetted by an Al Qaeda terrorist attack, my vote is totally and utterly worthless. All the candidates I can vote for in the national election (aside from President) that are against the Iraq War are already in office.
Jita I can understand. Lag or no, it's the heart of the economy, at least until they come to their senses and allow market information on a galaxy-wide, or empire-wide basis.
Amarr though, seems a dead zone to me. Rens is much more active.
The US military has had this for at least 10 years. I heard some air force types talking about handheld HERF (high energy radio frequency) guns back then. The main problem with them (as with these "law enforcement versions") was that targetting it ranged from tricky to near impossible. The big problem would be someone in Iraq or Afganistand getting a hold of one, or figuring out how to make one cheaply. Our military is so technology dependent, we'd be SOL in no time flat. Some pieces might be shielded (I don't know if humvees are, but I wouldn't be surprised) but an awful lot of it isn't. Radios and other comm gear are gone with the wind, along with any help those radios might have called in.
leaving the days of open warfare in the past, and with them, expensive weaponry
I agree with just about everything you've said except for the above quote.
The situation in Pakistan is, thanks to our best friend Musharraf, rapidly escalating from guerilla warfare to open conflic. Many people from inside the region are screaming to anyone who will listen (which of course doesn't include Bush and Company) that this is giving the Taliban and aligned tribal forces the perfect opportunity to take control of more of Pakistan. Sure, they still use guerilla tactics but they're also invading and taking Pakistani military bases, driving the central government back. Eventually they're going to make a move on the central government of Pakistan directly, and they're not going to be able to do that (and gain control of the nukes in the process) with an Iraq-style guerilla war.
In addition to that, with the serious instability in Pakistan, India isn't exactly happy-go-lucky about it. They've fought several wars with Pakistan in the short time since partition. They are very concerned about who is going to end up controlling Pakistan's nuclear weapons. They have their own nuclear weapons. They've got military assets ranged along the border between India and Pakistan. If someone pushes a button for whatever reason, you will have major armed conflict, not shadowy guerilla fighting.
China's current government is bound and determined to retake Taiwan. They have also more intelligence and foresight than previous Chinese Communist governments, and are working both their military, their diplomacy, and their economy to the point where they can walk in to Taiwan and just take control firing as few shots as they can if any. An important part of that is to build up enough serious military hardware, so that when they do decide to make their move, the US will be forced to think more than twice about interfering militarily, because that's the only possible way the US can interfere. Even if we were superb diplomats, getting the Chinese government to give up on Taiwan's re-integration, would be like trying to get John Hancock to unsign the Declaration of Independence. If we do actually want to stop mainland China from invading Taiwan, then our only option is military force, and lots of big and expensive military force at that.
And the Middle East. Ah, what a tranquil, magical place. When the US government pulls troops out finally, there will be a major war over the territory in Iraq. The Turks may very well attack the PKK in Iraqi Kurdistan (with the public pressure so high in Turkey, I'm amazed it hasn't happened yes), sparking war between Kurdistan (which has built up a pretty effective military) and Turkey. Iran will probably get into a ground war with Saudi Arabia, and a coalition of other Sunni Arab-majority nations that are realy really afraid of Iran's designs for the region, and they don't have Saddam or the US in the way any more. Saudi Arabia is buying up military hardware as fast as other countries will sell it to them right now in preparation for the conflict they see as a real possibiity.
Not to mention who knows what Chavez is planning to do with all the military hardware he's buying.
Nothing, but once they're informed of yur intention to leave, they should act limit any further damage you might cause. My guess would be that at most companies, your former manager is going to be tasked with finding out exactly what you've been doing when not under his eye in case something happened that you can be sued for. Especially at a place like Microsoft.
No, I'm not willing to put up with that. I don't have cable television service anymore, I don't even have an antenna to watch over-the-air TV. I don't even download TV shows off the Internet, through a place like iTunes or your local bittorrent tracker. If there's a TV show worth watching, I'll buy the DVDs.
If someone can't sustain their business without ads, I won't pay for it. They have no particular concern for me, so why in the world should I waste time worrying about them? Ad-supported free-to-me services on the Internet I can live with, but I generally run AdBlock, or Opera's content blocking so I often don't see them. If they find a way to get around these blockers (aside from popups) I don't worry about it. If they don't let people with adblockers running access the web page, I'll find some other source for the information. Doesn't matter to me if someone doesn't want me seeing their stuff if they can't get me to see an ad.
It undermines the fabric of trust in the workforce generally
This presumes that there is any actual trust in the workforce generally. When I was doing computer security consulting work we preached to anyone that would listen that the biggest danger to your security comes from employees, not outside aggressors. This is because IT IS TRUE. No, it isn't nice, but it's not a nice world. If someone has informed you that they are leaving the company, the first thing that should happen is that your manager should push a red button that instantly removes all access you have to computers and badge-access doors (or get that process started), and the second thing is calling security to escort them out. Your ill will is a negative to the company, but you causing damage before you left could aily be an even greater negative, with real financial implications. It doesn't make sense to take the chance that "I don't like this place anymore" isn't somewhere on the list of reasons why you're leaving the company.
...national governments (and/or the people in the country) tend to demand control of what happens in their territory. The international Internet will eventually become a thing of the past, just like the Wild West did. The more money and people came in, the less free and open it was. Or any new territory. Lots of us were pioneers on the digital territory of the Internet, but the outsiders have moved in and they are here to stay, because there are too many of them to toss back out on their butts, and they're making too much money from this Land of Opportunity we built.
Eventually China is going to be the model, if not something more drastic. Probaly something more drastic, after thinking about it. Internet connections between countries are eventually going to have to be by treaty. At some point Russia, China, or some other country is going to flex their cyberwarfare muscle on a country with actual clout (as opposed to poor Estonia), or the spam/botnet problem is going to get to a point that's impossible even for Washington to ignore, and then the lines are going to be physically severed and only slowly reconnected with friendly or neutral countries. Even if it doesn't come down to a physical severing, the best case scenario are national firewalls with ports opened only to friendly countries. Hell, maybe even import tarrifs on data traffic to/from certain countries.
Slashdot Mirror
Moral relativism is inescapable, even by those that reject it.
The Israeli-Palestinian situation is a prime example. If you make a claim that one side is right and the other is wrong, you are saying the weight of crimes on one side outweigh the crimes of the other (and this is assuming there are only two sides, which there aren't). Some immorality is worse than other immorality. Congratulations! You are now a moral relativist! Moral absolutionism is only practiced by corpses.
Nowadays, I would totally agree with the statement. They aren't a monopoly in operating systems anymore. Not that they shouldn't be punished for previous bad behavior, and they haven't yet been punished for it in the US (the handslap the US government gave them doesn't count). The EU seems to be taking concrete steps toward punishing Microsoft for their past bad behaviors, and they've proven they have the guts to stand up to MS's whining over the issue.
The fact that Vista is an almost total failure is pretty much proof positive that Microsoft has lost most if not all of their monopoly power. Your "fixed" version of my sentence fits Microsoft's current market position pretty damn well, actually. They're the biggest fish in the pond, but the other fish are getting a lot bigger, and Micrsoft can't act with impunity anymore.
They don't have a monopoly in MP3 players. They may be the most popular, but they certainly aren't the only maker of them. I have owned several Macs (I'm typing this on a Macbook Pro) and I just bought an MP3 player. Not an iPod, though. An iPod wasn't even on the list of possible purchases, and I had a lot to choose from (for the record, I ended up buying a SanDisk player).
I don't understand the claim that the iPod is a monopoly. It's certainly the most popular. Its popularity means that it's a force in the marketplace, but it's by no means a monopoly.
I don't disagree that this particular practice by Apple is completely unethical, but that doesn't mean it's illegal. If you don't like iPods or iTunes, there are plenty of supported players out there, most of them with more features than the iPod. If the iPod is the only mp3 player you find acceptable, and you still don't like how they're doing business, perhaps you should re-evaluate your standards.
Break out the board games ladies and gentlemen.
...of me ever getting cable again. I don't even like YouTube, but I'd rather be subjected to that than ever give these people another dime. The worst ad-infested, DRM laden video downloads are way, WAY better than this. I'd rather never watch a video ever again than allow that into my home. I can barely believe they're going to try this crap. Sent this to my Congresscritter. You should too.
Or perhaps it's a riskier activity, in part, because fewer people associate the activity of driving with risk. People take far more care when packing glassware than they do driving despite the fact that the latter is far more dangerous.
I would agree. I've got the "security mindset". I used to work in security on the consulting side, trying to fix up people's stuff. Thought about getting into research, but the culture of the security community at the time (right before 9/11) drove me away before I could. A kind of self-hating trifecta of ex-military intelligence grunts looking at disdain at anyone that didn't come out of the armed services, genius technical boffins with all the interpersonal skills of Rain Man, or wild-eyed "Information must be free, damn the consequences" idealogues. Since I don't fit into any one of those stereotypes, I made a lot more enemies than friends (though I did make plenty enough friends, and there are many exceptions to the rule), and decided once it was nigh impossible to find work after 9/11, that a change in direction wasn't such a bad thing after all.
Now I don't make nearly as much money, but I'm both a lot happier, and my work is a lot more helpful than it was when I was a part of the "security community". Working with little companies, a security mindset can go a very long way. I don't worry about intrusion detection or policy enforcement, or priviledges, or password strength, or encryption keys even a quarter as much as I had to before. Not when no one I deal with has a backup system that actually backs anything up (if they have a backup system) when I first walk in the door, or a simple switch of web browsers or e-mail clients will eliminate the lion's share of reasonable attack vectors into their network. Not when they don't understand the concept of patching their operating system. Not when a hands on explanation of what a phishing e-mail exactly is, what they look like, and what not to do.
Not that the more complicated stuff doesn't ever come up, because it does, and often I bring it up. I've set up a lot of VPNs lately, stopping people from what they had been doing, which is exposing their file servers directly to the outside world, with no encryption or really ANYTHING other than bad passwords stopping entry. Passwords is a big pet peeve of mine. So many of my customers have passwords that so many people know, or are trivial to guess, that they've started prefacing telling me what a new password is with "I know you're going to hate me" when they tell me the password is something that every employee that has ever been there knows, including the ones that hate the owner's guts. However, I choose to see that as a glass half full. They may not be doing the right thing, but THEY KNOW they're not doing the right thing, and have chosen to continue doing things a different way. Before I showed up and spoke to them in language they understood and took the time to explain how things work, the jargon and fearmongering of the public infosec community (including antivirus software companies) helped them nil. Maybe that kind of stuff works better in bigger organizations (heck, maybe it's the only thing that has any effect in big organizations). Perhaps that's why I couldn't handle bigger organizations and have found a lot more success with the personal touch.
FIOS is no bed of roses. The fiber optic modem/router they ship to you was intentionally set up by Verizon to not allow you to change the internal address space ever. You're stuck on 192.168.1.1 and if you relied on that being changeable, well, tough luck. If you do endpoint-to-endpoint VPNs, you're pretty much screwed if one of those ends has a Verizon FIOS modem at the other end. It can be worked around, but it makes life a living hell for people like me who try to both work with clients over a VPN between my office and theirs (I need access to the entire local network so I can support the machines, saving them from paying travel time) or for computer-stupid employees who want to connect to the office from their gods-know-what at home, and a VPN client setup just plain doesn't work, because it's too complicated to get the kind of broad access you can get with a router-to-router VPN. (Yes, I know YOU, Mr. Reader may be able to do it and maintain it, but Joe Company paying me $80/hour because they can't afford a full time computer guy won't be able to deal with it)
FIOS is fine enough for what it is, but being forced to move over to FIOS will make my life (and the lives of a lot of people willing to pay for a service that allows us to use our own router) pretty fucking miserable.
[blockquote]This is only a valid attack vector in the highly unlikely occasion that you have access to the powered on system, and even then it's somewhat dubious as to whether you'll get the data you need off of it.[/blockquote]
One word: laptops
Heck, I'll even throw in another word for free: cleaners
If your work is sensitive enough that you need to encrypt entire volumes, it would be reasonable to expect that there are people out there willing to take the time to target you for a theft of that data. The special circumstances required aren't particularly onerous.
Wrong. The Dreamcast did have region locking. However, it could be defeated with software you ran before putting the Japanese game in. A lot easier to get past, sure, but it wasn't lock-free.
Televised soccer just doesn't happen in the US, unless you're talking about niche channels that cater to immigrant/expatriot populations within the US, or the World Cup, which has lately actually been getting some play here. The closest major league soccer team to me went to the finals and not a person that wasn't a soccer obsessive even knew about it, except for a brief mention on local news that they were going, and a mention that they lost.
The sports that do get broadcast widely are far more commercial-friendly. Basketball, American football, and baseball (not really counting hockey anymore) all have frequent breaks where commercials can be inserted easily.
Re: book analogy
That, while marginally more appropriate, is still way too flawed to be of any use. If we were talking about a console game, or some non-online PC game it would be a far better analogy, but it's of no real relevance with regard to a MMO.
If Scribners is unsavory to the point of disgust I can easily (and often with far less expense) obtain Stephen King's work on the secondhand book market. Scribners receives no money whatsoever from my purchase. They don't even know I have it. There's no difference between that book and a copy I could have bought at Borders, aside from the secondhand book probably being a bit beat up. While I don't have a direct link to back this up, I'm quite certain I've seen book publishers decry secondhand bookstores and libraries as tantamount to outright theft, but they can't stop me reading that book as long as it holds together. If I really feel like supporting Stephen King I can send his literary agent a check for the difference, though whether they'd accept it is another matter entirely. This is the same way normal console games work.
With MMOs, it totally breaks down. I can't play WoW in any fashion without a direct relationship with Blizzard. If I stop paying them, I am totally prevented from playing their game. If Blizzard does stuff I don't like, then there is no other method to get the content through someone else or secondhand. Well, I tell a lie, there are "player run" unofficial servers that reverse-engineer it, but they don't work worth a damn, and Blizzard goes after their operators when they find them (as they have every right to do).
Re: the other stuff
What you're saying is all well and good as far as it goes. Yes, theoretically an organized protest would do something. That is, if it ever actually worked in practice. From fairly long experience, the only statistic MMO companies care about are subscription numbers. You can have as many people in an organized protest on the forums or in-game over an issue, and the only effect you're going to see is your forum thread locked/deleted, or pissed off other users yelling at you to stop lagging out . When people start cancelling accounts, that's when things actually get changed. Blizzard is no exception. On several occasions, really bad ideas by Blizzard were not stopped until lots of people started cancelling accounts and posting links to their screenshots as proof. And frankly, even when subscription numbers plummet, sometimes MMO companies just ignore it. Just look at the pathetic wretch that is Star Wars: Galaxies today, and see its sordid history.
So, you're claiming that good methods for effecting change in one sphere (government and social groups) are effective methods for change in all spheres, and that's just not true. Not to mention that the book-video game analogy is so deeply flawed it would take more time than I have to go into it. How is that not exactly what you're claiming other people do, but the other way around? How about using the approach that works best in the circumstances.
Just because you are correct when you complain that people who won't use any tool but a hammer break way too many things unneccesarily doesn't mean you're any less wrong when you try using a screwdriver to bang a nail in.
Yes, they should, because there are an awful lot of things out there that one can do that are provided in ways that aren't objectionable. I'm not saying "go read a book you lazy fat fuck" or "shut up, I'm trying to farm more here and your whining is giving me a headache". You can complain as much as you want to Blizzard, but as long as you are unwilling to stop paying them until they change things so you don't find them objectionable your complaints are sound and fury, signifying nothing, and they know it. If you actually want a change, you have to be willing to put your money where your mouth is, because your money is your only leverage in your business relationship with Blizzard. I personally cancelled a month ago for other reasons, but this information nails the door shut on me paying Blizzard money as long as stuff like this is occuring.
This is not life or death. This is not real world governance. I'm not suggesting you leave America if you don't like it here. I'm not saying that if you don't like your job you should just quit and find another one. This is a video game. Finding another MMO to take up your excess time is a matter of $50 at worst, since just about all of them worth playing give free trial periods. Your friends that you met in WoW will still be your friends when you stop playing if they are real friends and not merely aquaintances. There is such a thing as instance messenger and voice chat. Gain some perspective.
No, but now it means that the people who can and do go through the bother of watching what it is doing can't report that to the rest of us. Kinda like open source software. I personally can't audit the code, but other people can and do, and they can report problems. With Warden as it used to be, no, I wasn't likely to watch exactly what it did myself, but other people could and were reporting on what stuff it was looking at. Now no one can. That is a bridge too far for me, and I'd be cancelling now if I hadn't already cancelled for other reasons, and I certainly won't be going back ever now that this has been made known. Stopping gold spammers and botters is all well and good, but this goes way too far. If you're happy to see me and people like me stay away, well I'm happier to be gone now than I was 30 minutes ago, so everyone's happy. Ain't that nice?
Here's a good way to do that. CANCEL YOUR ACCOUNT.
If you can't bear to cancel your account, get help or stop complaining.
Not to mention that, given the electoral college system and living in a state which has the chance of voting Republican hovering right around the chance that I, personally, am targetted by an Al Qaeda terrorist attack, my vote is totally and utterly worthless. All the candidates I can vote for in the national election (aside from President) that are against the Iraq War are already in office.
Jita I can understand. Lag or no, it's the heart of the economy, at least until they come to their senses and allow market information on a galaxy-wide, or empire-wide basis.
Amarr though, seems a dead zone to me. Rens is much more active.
The US military has had this for at least 10 years. I heard some air force types talking about handheld HERF (high energy radio frequency) guns back then. The main problem with them (as with these "law enforcement versions") was that targetting it ranged from tricky to near impossible. The big problem would be someone in Iraq or Afganistand getting a hold of one, or figuring out how to make one cheaply. Our military is so technology dependent, we'd be SOL in no time flat. Some pieces might be shielded (I don't know if humvees are, but I wouldn't be surprised) but an awful lot of it isn't. Radios and other comm gear are gone with the wind, along with any help those radios might have called in.
I agree with just about everything you've said except for the above quote.
The situation in Pakistan is, thanks to our best friend Musharraf, rapidly escalating from guerilla warfare to open conflic. Many people from inside the region are screaming to anyone who will listen (which of course doesn't include Bush and Company) that this is giving the Taliban and aligned tribal forces the perfect opportunity to take control of more of Pakistan. Sure, they still use guerilla tactics but they're also invading and taking Pakistani military bases, driving the central government back. Eventually they're going to make a move on the central government of Pakistan directly, and they're not going to be able to do that (and gain control of the nukes in the process) with an Iraq-style guerilla war.
In addition to that, with the serious instability in Pakistan, India isn't exactly happy-go-lucky about it. They've fought several wars with Pakistan in the short time since partition. They are very concerned about who is going to end up controlling Pakistan's nuclear weapons. They have their own nuclear weapons. They've got military assets ranged along the border between India and Pakistan. If someone pushes a button for whatever reason, you will have major armed conflict, not shadowy guerilla fighting.
China's current government is bound and determined to retake Taiwan. They have also more intelligence and foresight than previous Chinese Communist governments, and are working both their military, their diplomacy, and their economy to the point where they can walk in to Taiwan and just take control firing as few shots as they can if any. An important part of that is to build up enough serious military hardware, so that when they do decide to make their move, the US will be forced to think more than twice about interfering militarily, because that's the only possible way the US can interfere. Even if we were superb diplomats, getting the Chinese government to give up on Taiwan's re-integration, would be like trying to get John Hancock to unsign the Declaration of Independence. If we do actually want to stop mainland China from invading Taiwan, then our only option is military force, and lots of big and expensive military force at that.
And the Middle East. Ah, what a tranquil, magical place. When the US government pulls troops out finally, there will be a major war over the territory in Iraq. The Turks may very well attack the PKK in Iraqi Kurdistan (with the public pressure so high in Turkey, I'm amazed it hasn't happened yes), sparking war between Kurdistan (which has built up a pretty effective military) and Turkey. Iran will probably get into a ground war with Saudi Arabia, and a coalition of other Sunni Arab-majority nations that are realy really afraid of Iran's designs for the region, and they don't have Saddam or the US in the way any more. Saudi Arabia is buying up military hardware as fast as other countries will sell it to them right now in preparation for the conflict they see as a real possibiity.
Not to mention who knows what Chavez is planning to do with all the military hardware he's buying.
Nothing, but once they're informed of yur intention to leave, they should act limit any further damage you might cause. My guess would be that at most companies, your former manager is going to be tasked with finding out exactly what you've been doing when not under his eye in case something happened that you can be sued for. Especially at a place like Microsoft.
No, I'm not willing to put up with that. I don't have cable television service anymore, I don't even have an antenna to watch over-the-air TV. I don't even download TV shows off the Internet, through a place like iTunes or your local bittorrent tracker. If there's a TV show worth watching, I'll buy the DVDs.
If someone can't sustain their business without ads, I won't pay for it. They have no particular concern for me, so why in the world should I waste time worrying about them? Ad-supported free-to-me services on the Internet I can live with, but I generally run AdBlock, or Opera's content blocking so I often don't see them. If they find a way to get around these blockers (aside from popups) I don't worry about it. If they don't let people with adblockers running access the web page, I'll find some other source for the information. Doesn't matter to me if someone doesn't want me seeing their stuff if they can't get me to see an ad.
This presumes that there is any actual trust in the workforce generally. When I was doing computer security consulting work we preached to anyone that would listen that the biggest danger to your security comes from employees, not outside aggressors. This is because IT IS TRUE. No, it isn't nice, but it's not a nice world. If someone has informed you that they are leaving the company, the first thing that should happen is that your manager should push a red button that instantly removes all access you have to computers and badge-access doors (or get that process started), and the second thing is calling security to escort them out. Your ill will is a negative to the company, but you causing damage before you left could aily be an even greater negative, with real financial implications. It doesn't make sense to take the chance that "I don't like this place anymore" isn't somewhere on the list of reasons why you're leaving the company.
...national governments (and/or the people in the country) tend to demand control of what happens in their territory. The international Internet will eventually become a thing of the past, just like the Wild West did. The more money and people came in, the less free and open it was. Or any new territory. Lots of us were pioneers on the digital territory of the Internet, but the outsiders have moved in and they are here to stay, because there are too many of them to toss back out on their butts, and they're making too much money from this Land of Opportunity we built.
Eventually China is going to be the model, if not something more drastic. Probaly something more drastic, after thinking about it. Internet connections between countries are eventually going to have to be by treaty. At some point Russia, China, or some other country is going to flex their cyberwarfare muscle on a country with actual clout (as opposed to poor Estonia), or the spam/botnet problem is going to get to a point that's impossible even for Washington to ignore, and then the lines are going to be physically severed and only slowly reconnected with friendly or neutral countries. Even if it doesn't come down to a physical severing, the best case scenario are national firewalls with ports opened only to friendly countries. Hell, maybe even import tarrifs on data traffic to/from certain countries.
...is stopping it dead in its tracks. And as far as targetted ads go, I prefer targetting ads before they can target me.