No, I'm the person who has some morality... if I don't want to pay for something, I don't just take it. You can twist and squirm as much as you want, but when you take something without paying for it, you are stealing. You can argue as much as you want that you "aren't depriving anyone of anything" or "you wouldn't have paid for it anyway" or "that candy bar really wanted to be free, so I put it in my pocket", but the reality is, you wanted something, you didn't want to pay for it, so you grabbed it.
Sure, they have backstory, but as far as the in-game story goes, it may as well just be a news report of what's going on while you're grinding
The quests in WotLK get you up close and personal with Arthas. My priest is level 80 and I'm doing the Ice Crown quests, not to grind or get experience or loot, but because I've GOT to know the rest of the story.
You pay for the game, you pay for the expansions, and you pay for every month you sink into the damned game.
Well, let's see... should Blizzard give the game away for free? Should they be running servers for 12 million people for free? And as for expansions, Blizzard has release a ton of content w/o charging. Just off the top of my head both Black Temple and Sunwell were released well after BC came out, no extra charge, and they've already indicated that WotLK will include several more expansions, no extra charge.
You're in no way involved in any moving plot, and you're in no way involved in anything epic that's truly yours.
It's hard to imagine how you could be more involved with the story. Look at the Wrathgate and tell me you don't make permanent changes to the world. Yes, other players can have that same experience. What computer game have you played where each individual player gets a completely unique, custom tailored experience? For $15/mo should Blizzard have a couple of GMs follow you around and create events for you?
There is zero gameplay, and there is zero point to the game, especially since the game "doesn't really start" until you reach level 60 and start going on raids that thousands of people have already done before you. There's no glory, no nothing.
Sounds like you played hard and then got burnt out. Well yeah, you don't play for glory, you play for fun. No one is going to think you are uberz just because you are 60, or 70, or 80, or have the bear mount, or whatever. You play ALL computer games for fun, not glory. If you want glory and adventure, go climb a mountain. Go trek into uncharted wilderness. Computer games are spare time relaxation. What's wrong isn't the game, it's your expectations of what the game will provide you.
Well, if they are willing to go to the trouble of downloading lots of games and then playing some of them, seems pretty likely that they would buy SOME games. Not hundreds of games, but some games. So yeah, they are costing the game companies money.
Well, WoW's WotLK has a pretty amazing story line and a number of great quest lines that I would match up against single player RPGs. So yeah, WoW has a well scripted middle.
Nope. You take something without paying for it, you are stealing. Period. Same as if you walk into a bookstore and stuff a book under your jacket. It's called theft.
Well, because just downloading the torrent w/o buying the product is theft. Period. If you really really hate DRM, don't buy the product and don't steal it either.
But he didn't show the encrypted stuff in the first place, not in unencrypted form anyway.
Well, actually, from the article:
Boucher accessed the Z drive of his laptop at the ICE agent's request. The ICE agent viewed the contents of some of the Z drive's files, and ascertained that they may consist of images or videos of child pornography.
So yeah, the guy showed the evidence, then tried to do a "do-over". In other words, no rights violations to see here, move along.
Well, the issue isn't that they catch Bin Laden shopping in duty-free, it's that they find someone they don't want in the US, and they don't have to prove anything fancy, just that the person lied on the immigration form.
No, showing the cops evidence and then saying "gee, I didn't mean to show you that, you can't use that evidence" is forbidden, for pretty obvious reasons.
Ok... IANAL, but I'm going to give you the definition of "reasonable doubt" as it was given to me by a judge when I was on jury trial many years ago. Basically, what he said was "reasonable doubt" is NOT "no doubt". It must be a doubt that is literally "reasonable", based on reasoning about the evidence. It is NOT "there was no other possible way this could have occurred".
If you're going to construct some complex theory about how someone could have gone to a lot of trouble to frame you, you better have evidence that supports your theory, or else it is not "reasonable", and therefore doesn't lead to "reasonable doubt".
There was an article on Slashdot in the last day or two that listed the 1,000,000 number but also said that 300,000 had been sold via a government contract to one South American country, and 600,000 to another (one of the countries was Peru, not sure of the other). So basically that one million was two individual very large deals, not lots and lots of people suddenly developing an interest in buying the product. The problem with having a few big deals is that if you don't get the next big deal, you are out of business, which it sounds like is what happened.
One of the biggest problems facing the education system in the country in which I lived (Ghana) is the expense and unavailability of teaching materials. Rare is the classroom where anyone other than the teacher has a textbook, and frequently even the teacher doesn't have one.
So, instead of spending the $225 or $250 on one laptop that probably doesn't connect to anything, about about buying 20 or 30 textbooks? Seems more useful.
1) Downloads typically use far more bandwidth than web surfing, gaming, email, etc, so their impact is far greater.
2) Downloads are far less sensitive to delays. Presumably you aren't sitting by your computer for an hour while you download a movie. It's pretty well accepted that interactive use takes precedence over background operations.
Then go back to the way we did it for a thousand bloody years before the IP scam was cooked up! In case you didn't know we actually did have music and art before you could set on your ass and draw a check for 150+ years because you wrote a one hit wonder. It was called patronage and live performances.
And as a music lover I assume you will go back to the way we did for a thousand years and not listen to any music that isn't live? No downloads, do discs, if you aren't sitting across from the musician, no music? That work for you?
No, I was responding to the "it works for you", and pointed out that what works for you may not work for me. You want to jam a phone into your pocket, great. I don't. You want to carry a convergence device that's a pain the rear (maybe literally) when you exercise? I don't. You like convergence? Guess what, not everyone does.
I don't want to carry my phone in my pocket because I'm always afraid I'm going to somehow jam that antenna stub and damage it. I keep it in my day pack, along with my nano, running clothes, combo lock for gym locker, phone, and a variety of other stuff.
Convergence is a great theory, it just doesn't work for everything. For example, I have an original IPod Nano that I use when I work out. It's so small and light that it really is almost unnoticeable. I can run with it, I can slip it into any pocket and walk with it, I don't need to put it into into "music mode" in order to play it, etc. I do NOT want convergence, I want the device that is perfectly suited to its function.
The problem that your company probably ran into was not taking the culture far enough.
We were down to less than half strength. Just how far do you think we can take it? Till the last guy turns out the lights? And, as I pointed out in another post, the end result was that this company, which had rolled up a bunch of successful software companies onto one conglomerate, proceeded to produce NO new product, and lost hundreds of millions of dollars. Finally the guy who was pushing this nonsense was been escorted from the building, but the end result is angry customers, a huge loss in corporate value, and employees who have learned that the first loyalty has to be to yourself.
If GE was truly able to cut an enormous number of workers, then I suspect they were a special case of a huge company that was massively overstaffed. If a company doesn't focus on what each employee is doing, if you start having 10 employees editing the company newspaper and another 15 planning the christmas party all year, then yeah, you're overstaffed. But that's specific to those companies, not a general rule to apply to everyone.
Our company had run "lean and mean" for many years. It was privately owned, and the owners made sure that they only hired when it made sense, and they knew that the new employee would contribute to the business. Making it a policy to fire regularly under such circumstances is, I will repeat, just plain dumb.
Well, this just in... it didn't work the boss who was instituting it at my old company. After 9 years and 3 failed attempts to create a "next-gen" product, Mr. "we must fire / hire 10% each year" has just left the building to "pursue other interests". And you know what the grand result of all his plans and firings were? Nothing. That's right, no new product. Not even a partial product. Nothing. A couple of websites glued on top of existing product. Literally hundreds of millions of dollars down the drain, and ZERO to show for it. That's the end result of the "fire people till we succeed" mentality.
He is NOT a child. He certainly understands that the consequence of breaking the law is to go to prison. Just because he didn't care about the consequences isn't a defence.
The whole issue of "bad security" is a red herring. A number of years back, a friend of mine used to leave his keys in his car and his car unlocked in case a friend of his needed to borrow it. One cold winter night a guy stole his car, held up a store, and then wrapped the car around a telephone pole. Guess what? It was still a crime and the guy still went to jail. There's no requirement that you make your car hard to steal before stealing it becomes a crime.
The problem wasn't my personality... I did fine. I wasn't a manager so I didn't have to deal with stress of firing people, and I was well respected as a developer so there wasn't any chance that I would be fired.
What I'm talking about is a situation that sounds somewhat different from GE. The nut case who was running our asylum wasn't trying to permanently cut staff, he just wanted 10% turnover each year. Which as far as I can tell is a recipe for disaster... you are always training people, always losing knowledge, and always pissing people off. It's just plain dumb.
Go back, read what I actually wrote, and try again.
Or, on the off chance that you are lazy, here's the bullet point executive summary: my original post said that no matter what Microsoft did, they wouldn't get any credit for it from the anti-MS crowd. When you said
"The proper response for any Microsoft web initiative is to tell them to fuck themselves"
Well, I've seen it once, and I can guarantee you it didn't work. In our case, we had already had pretty massive layoffs, so any deadwood was long gone. The basic problem is that you probably aren't going to get rid of the lowest performing 10%, you're gone to get rid of the 10% that the boss doesn't know or doesn't care about, regardless of how valuable those people are.
And on a basic level, I strongly object to the idea that it's a good business practice to just keep turning up the heat on your employees. I worked for many, many years for a very successful company that thrived because we kept a strong, informed staff that knew how to work together. We were acquired by a "high pressure, gotta deliver now, fire the bottom 10%, no time to do it right just do it!" company,and the result was dismal failure after dismal failure. So to say the least, I'm not impressed.
I had a boss who thought like that. He wanted to annually cut the bottom 10%. The problem is defining who that bottom 10% is... some of his buddies were jerks who deserved to disappear, but no chance they would go. Not to mention this constant mentality of "we have to fire people" is horrible for morale.
Basically the people who get fired are the ones farthest from the boss who wants to do the firing. He just tells everyone they have to fire 10%, and then he gets to sleep well at night, while everyone else suffers the agonies of the damned.
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No, I'm the person who has some morality... if I don't want to pay for something, I don't just take it. You can twist and squirm as much as you want, but when you take something without paying for it, you are stealing. You can argue as much as you want that you "aren't depriving anyone of anything" or "you wouldn't have paid for it anyway" or "that candy bar really wanted to be free, so I put it in my pocket", but the reality is, you wanted something, you didn't want to pay for it, so you grabbed it.
Sure, they have backstory, but as far as the in-game story goes, it may as well just be a news report of what's going on while you're grinding
The quests in WotLK get you up close and personal with Arthas. My priest is level 80 and I'm doing the Ice Crown quests, not to grind or get experience or loot, but because I've GOT to know the rest of the story.
You pay for the game, you pay for the expansions, and you pay for every month you sink into the damned game.
Well, let's see... should Blizzard give the game away for free? Should they be running servers for 12 million people for free? And as for expansions, Blizzard has release a ton of content w/o charging. Just off the top of my head both Black Temple and Sunwell were released well after BC came out, no extra charge, and they've already indicated that WotLK will include several more expansions, no extra charge.
You're in no way involved in any moving plot, and you're in no way involved in anything epic that's truly yours.
It's hard to imagine how you could be more involved with the story. Look at the Wrathgate and tell me you don't make permanent changes to the world. Yes, other players can have that same experience. What computer game have you played where each individual player gets a completely unique, custom tailored experience? For $15/mo should Blizzard have a couple of GMs follow you around and create events for you?
There is zero gameplay, and there is zero point to the game, especially since the game "doesn't really start" until you reach level 60 and start going on raids that thousands of people have already done before you. There's no glory, no nothing.
Sounds like you played hard and then got burnt out. Well yeah, you don't play for glory, you play for fun. No one is going to think you are uberz just because you are 60, or 70, or 80, or have the bear mount, or whatever. You play ALL computer games for fun, not glory. If you want glory and adventure, go climb a mountain. Go trek into uncharted wilderness. Computer games are spare time relaxation. What's wrong isn't the game, it's your expectations of what the game will provide you.
Well, if they are willing to go to the trouble of downloading lots of games and then playing some of them, seems pretty likely that they would buy SOME games. Not hundreds of games, but some games. So yeah, they are costing the game companies money.
Well, WoW's WotLK has a pretty amazing story line and a number of great quest lines that I would match up against single player RPGs. So yeah, WoW has a well scripted middle.
Nope. You take something without paying for it, you are stealing. Period. Same as if you walk into a bookstore and stuff a book under your jacket. It's called theft.
Well, because just downloading the torrent w/o buying the product is theft. Period. If you really really hate DRM, don't buy the product and don't steal it either.
Well, actually, from the article:
Boucher accessed the Z drive of his laptop at the ICE agent's request. The ICE agent viewed the contents of some of the Z drive's files, and ascertained that they may consist of images or videos of child pornography.
So yeah, the guy showed the evidence, then tried to do a "do-over". In other words, no rights violations to see here, move along.
Well, the issue isn't that they catch Bin Laden shopping in duty-free, it's that they find someone they don't want in the US, and they don't have to prove anything fancy, just that the person lied on the immigration form.
No, showing the cops evidence and then saying "gee, I didn't mean to show you that, you can't use that evidence" is forbidden, for pretty obvious reasons.
Ok... IANAL, but I'm going to give you the definition of "reasonable doubt" as it was given to me by a judge when I was on jury trial many years ago. Basically, what he said was "reasonable doubt" is NOT "no doubt". It must be a doubt that is literally "reasonable", based on reasoning about the evidence. It is NOT "there was no other possible way this could have occurred".
If you're going to construct some complex theory about how someone could have gone to a lot of trouble to frame you, you better have evidence that supports your theory, or else it is not "reasonable", and therefore doesn't lead to "reasonable doubt".
There was an article on Slashdot in the last day or two that listed the 1,000,000 number but also said that 300,000 had been sold via a government contract to one South American country, and 600,000 to another (one of the countries was Peru, not sure of the other). So basically that one million was two individual very large deals, not lots and lots of people suddenly developing an interest in buying the product. The problem with having a few big deals is that if you don't get the next big deal, you are out of business, which it sounds like is what happened.
One of the biggest problems facing the education system in the country in which I lived (Ghana) is the expense and unavailability of teaching materials. Rare is the classroom where anyone other than the teacher has a textbook, and frequently even the teacher doesn't have one.
So, instead of spending the $225 or $250 on one laptop that probably doesn't connect to anything, about about buying 20 or 30 textbooks? Seems more useful.
Two reasons:
1) Downloads typically use far more bandwidth than web surfing, gaming, email, etc, so their impact is far greater.
2) Downloads are far less sensitive to delays. Presumably you aren't sitting by your computer for an hour while you download a movie. It's pretty well accepted that interactive use takes precedence over background operations.
Even tho I did preview, I missed one typo: "do discs" should be "no disks"...
Then go back to the way we did it for a thousand bloody years before the IP scam was cooked up! In case you didn't know we actually did have music and art before you could set on your ass and draw a check for 150+ years because you wrote a one hit wonder. It was called patronage and live performances.
And as a music lover I assume you will go back to the way we did for a thousand years and not listen to any music that isn't live? No downloads, do discs, if you aren't sitting across from the musician, no music? That work for you?
No, I was responding to the "it works for you", and pointed out that what works for you may not work for me. You want to jam a phone into your pocket, great. I don't. You want to carry a convergence device that's a pain the rear (maybe literally) when you exercise? I don't. You like convergence? Guess what, not everyone does.
That's fine, for you.
I don't want to carry my phone in my pocket because I'm always afraid I'm going to somehow jam that antenna stub and damage it. I keep it in my day pack, along with my nano, running clothes, combo lock for gym locker, phone, and a variety of other stuff.
Convergence is a great theory, it just doesn't work for everything. For example, I have an original IPod Nano that I use when I work out. It's so small and light that it really is almost unnoticeable. I can run with it, I can slip it into any pocket and walk with it, I don't need to put it into into "music mode" in order to play it, etc. I do NOT want convergence, I want the device that is perfectly suited to its function.
The problem that your company probably ran into was not taking the culture far enough.
We were down to less than half strength. Just how far do you think we can take it? Till the last guy turns out the lights? And, as I pointed out in another post, the end result was that this company, which had rolled up a bunch of successful software companies onto one conglomerate, proceeded to produce NO new product, and lost hundreds of millions of dollars. Finally the guy who was pushing this nonsense was been escorted from the building, but the end result is angry customers, a huge loss in corporate value, and employees who have learned that the first loyalty has to be to yourself.
If GE was truly able to cut an enormous number of workers, then I suspect they were a special case of a huge company that was massively overstaffed. If a company doesn't focus on what each employee is doing, if you start having 10 employees editing the company newspaper and another 15 planning the christmas party all year, then yeah, you're overstaffed. But that's specific to those companies, not a general rule to apply to everyone.
Our company had run "lean and mean" for many years. It was privately owned, and the owners made sure that they only hired when it made sense, and they knew that the new employee would contribute to the business. Making it a policy to fire regularly under such circumstances is, I will repeat, just plain dumb.
Well, this just in... it didn't work the boss who was instituting it at my old company. After 9 years and 3 failed attempts to create a "next-gen" product, Mr. "we must fire / hire 10% each year" has just left the building to "pursue other interests". And you know what the grand result of all his plans and firings were? Nothing. That's right, no new product. Not even a partial product. Nothing. A couple of websites glued on top of existing product. Literally hundreds of millions of dollars down the drain, and ZERO to show for it. That's the end result of the "fire people till we succeed" mentality.
He is NOT a child. He certainly understands that the consequence of breaking the law is to go to prison. Just because he didn't care about the consequences isn't a defence.
The whole issue of "bad security" is a red herring. A number of years back, a friend of mine used to leave his keys in his car and his car unlocked in case a friend of his needed to borrow it. One cold winter night a guy stole his car, held up a store, and then wrapped the car around a telephone pole. Guess what? It was still a crime and the guy still went to jail. There's no requirement that you make your car hard to steal before stealing it becomes a crime.
The problem wasn't my personality... I did fine. I wasn't a manager so I didn't have to deal with stress of firing people, and I was well respected as a developer so there wasn't any chance that I would be fired.
What I'm talking about is a situation that sounds somewhat different from GE. The nut case who was running our asylum wasn't trying to permanently cut staff, he just wanted 10% turnover each year. Which as far as I can tell is a recipe for disaster... you are always training people, always losing knowledge, and always pissing people off. It's just plain dumb.
Go back, read what I actually wrote, and try again.
Or, on the off chance that you are lazy, here's the bullet point executive summary: my original post said that no matter what Microsoft did, they wouldn't get any credit for it from the anti-MS crowd. When you said
"The proper response for any Microsoft web initiative is to tell them to fuck themselves"
you made it abundantly clear that I was right.
Well, I've seen it once, and I can guarantee you it didn't work. In our case, we had already had pretty massive layoffs, so any deadwood was long gone. The basic problem is that you probably aren't going to get rid of the lowest performing 10%, you're gone to get rid of the 10% that the boss doesn't know or doesn't care about, regardless of how valuable those people are.
And on a basic level, I strongly object to the idea that it's a good business practice to just keep turning up the heat on your employees. I worked for many, many years for a very successful company that thrived because we kept a strong, informed staff that knew how to work together. We were acquired by a "high pressure, gotta deliver now, fire the bottom 10%, no time to do it right just do it!" company ,and the result was dismal failure after dismal failure. So to say the least, I'm not impressed.
I had a boss who thought like that. He wanted to annually cut the bottom 10%. The problem is defining who that bottom 10% is... some of his buddies were jerks who deserved to disappear, but no chance they would go. Not to mention this constant mentality of "we have to fire people" is horrible for morale.
Basically the people who get fired are the ones farthest from the boss who wants to do the firing. He just tells everyone they have to fire 10%, and then he gets to sleep well at night, while everyone else suffers the agonies of the damned.