I have another question to the anonymous devloper: Have you considered NOT being an asshole about it?
Yes, your software turned up on TPB. So has software from Microsoft, and from Adobe, and from Bethesda, and from... well pretty much every software company on the fucking planet. So your first job is to get over yourself and realize that all that has to happen is for someone to crack or strip out your copy protection once, and that's that, the DRM is meaningless and a wasted cost to you.
Now, have you considered building up brand loyalty instead? Reward your paying customers with support, treat them well, maybe give them access to beta or updates if they want. Focus on making your software the best you can, and making your customers feel like their investment in your software is worth it.
Now let's look at your NEXT proposal: Would it be insane to release a 'not for commercial use' copy that does some spying and reporting on you, along with a spy-free version for ~$10,000? I feel like that would reduce the incentive to crack the paid version - Yes, it would be insane. Anyone who doesn't want to be spied on is going to block the damn thing via firewall, or they'll crack the unpaid version and route all its traffic to 127.0.0.1 or dev/null.
Or this: Some of our potential paying customers are using it without paying - face it, if they're not paying now, you are either charging too much or they'll be just as happy with freely available alternatives that either cost less or are completely free-to-them.
, and some non-potential customers are using it without paying. - If they're not a potential customer, why do you give a rat's ass? Again, they'll just go to some other source or use some other free (to them, whether actually free or not) program.
Chances are, 90% of the software's functions that these people are using are duplicated already by Virtualdub (Free/Opensource) and Windows Live Movie Maker (Not open source but free to anyone with Windows). If you want to make sales, try not being an asshole, price your program appropriately, and treat your customers as customers with whom you want to build loyalty.
Oh, and by the way: a legit copy of Adobe Premiere Elements 10, which probably does everything your software does and then some, is available for somewhere between $70 and $130 online right now. $10,000 for your suite? No fucking way it's even close to that cost.
He was confirming and reinforcing his own bias. It's ad hominem; he was marginalizing his perceived opponents.
Or, he's known enough hunters to know that that's what a good number of them do - wander out into the woods, get at least mildly "lubricated", and go "hunting."
Where I grew up it wasn't the pigeons, it was deer season. I don't really mind it - deer in the cities are dangerous in multiple ways. Plenty of fatalities from road collisions, plenty of issues with pets and people during mating season. I know of two people who got rid of ground floor bay windows due to it - it's quite a shock when a bull decides to try to put an antler through the glass thinking its reflection is a rival and starting a fight.
At least with deer season, we get the venison meat and it culls the herd enough that the city deer can be run out into the woods and don't get too tempted to come back once they integrate into the feral herd. But we still have problems with the hunting crowd - they do like getting drunk, and you can give them all the safety training classes and pass the "no hunting while drunk" laws (how do you enforce it? There's like one sheriff and one deputy in a 100 sqmile area!) all day long, you're still going to have a large percentage of them who are little more than bored, drunken wackjobs with loaded weapons.
"They" and "Them" was not an invention of the Left in America. Demonization of the "Other" was purely the Right's innovation. If you go over the history of the US since WWII, you'll find that the Left's approach has been, "Let's get as many people on board as possible" and the Right's approach has been, "We're being victimized by THEM".
At the risk of Godwinning the thread... the right wing got round to starting this not very long after a war involving Germany, Italy, and Japan was resolved... and their initial targets "just happened" to be blacks, jews, and "communists." Anyone else have a sneaking hunch whose plan they were thinking had worked so well in Europe for taking power?
Even so, if you look at tip of the spear of the Left in America currently, the Occupy Movement, there is still an effort to invite and include the tea party and disaffected poor white working class people (which has been surprisingly effective, by the way). How inviting were the Tea Party to people who were pro-choice or pro-union or pro gay marriage.
Dunno about those groups, but I've gone to a couple events (4th of July celebrations last year) that were swarming with Tea Party folks... they were busy getting drunk as shit and started shouting racist crap and spitting at a friend of mine who's latino, despite the fact that my friend's family presence in the USA predates the entrance of Texas into the country.
If one says "Obama is a liberal" the next will say, Obama is a tyrant, the next will say he's Hitler, and the next will say he's the Antichrist (though, to be fair, "Antichrist" is usually where they run out of steam, because it's hard to top that one
Actually, that's about the time that the dumbasses start insinuating Obama's either a muslim, or start calling him a "marxist socialist."
And who the fuck is "We", white man? You got a mouse in your pocket? And who are YOU and your "WE" losing your country to, exactly? The liberals? You start out decrying how someone's comments are horrible because they talk about "THEY and THEM" and then you say, "We're losing OUR country". Do you even realize that the statement, "We're losing OUR country" is the very definition of pointing a finger and blaming, "THEY and THEM"? "We're losing OUR country" has zero meaning unless there is a THEM that you are demonizing. So who the fuck are you losing YOUR country to, exactly?
Apparently, Mr. Racist Redneck Retard is losing "his" country to actual Americans...
Right wing followup: When you have neither the law, nor the facts, nor the table in your favor, get a lawyer to hold a gun to someone's back and tell your opponent to shut up or you'll bankrupt them in legal fees defending yourself anyways.
This is the problem of the current state of US law. It doesn't MATTER if you have the law in your favor, or the facts in your favor, provided the other side has enough money to make you waste all of yours defending yourself in court against spurious motions and threats.
The innocent have nothing to fear, yes, I know that. Actually, what the innocent still have to fear is HI acting like every other right wing shill group. They have two things on their side: money and lawyers. They can bankrupt an innocent person through the act of barratry and as a corrupt right wing shill group whose previous exploits involve funding faked studies to do things like claim cigarette smoke isn't dangerous, they've already shown that they have no moral compass stopping them from doing so.
If they fear commenting on these documents to such a degree, I have to ask why, See above. If they get exposed so blatantly, they might have to fold. And the people writing for them might have to find real work rather than being right wing shills.
Second, the whole climate change is bunk movement's claim is that politics is being played, and you can't trust the results saying it is happening. We have a memo here implying that politics might be being played, and research/motives to be questioned. Revealing this is grounds for being sued.
Third, lawsuits potentially coming? Even ignoring the chilling effect, do we really need to reach that stage of escalation int his subject where every time someone speaks for one side the other side begins suing?
They are all attacking the messengers and trying to cease the message. They have yet to put out anything to show these are false. Just silencing the people trying to talk about this. Right wing shillery RELIES on two things: the echo chamber and the chilling effect. Ever noticed how a Fox News viewer screams about the "liberal media" nonstop? It's because if they ever listened to both sides, they'd realize their side's argument is more full of holes than a loaf of aged swiss cheese.
Your case would be much, much stronger if you weren't quoting Megan "Koch Shill" McArdle.
And your claims are contradictory and easily questioned: Every document in the bundle except the strategy memo and an IRS document was printed to PDF in the central time zone. The IRS document was printed to PDF in GMT-4. The strategy memo was scanned in with an Epson scanner to a PDF by someone in the Pacific time zone. Yes, because everyone in a "Think Tank" works in the same monolithic building and lives within 5 miles of each other. Oh wait - no, they don't. They spread all around. "Think Tanks" , especially corrupt corporate shill tanks like Heartland Institute, hire supposed "experts" from wherever they can get them, and they trade on the reputations of their members' day jobs to falsely claim legitimacy.
All documents except the strategy memo and a board directory were printed to PDF on January 16, the day before a board meeting. Oh my gosh - someone printed a board directory AFTER the board meeting? SCANDALOUS! And they even did it in the central time zone, the same as some of the other documents... wait, weren't you just arguing that the previous IRS and Strategy documents were illegitimate because they were scanned/printed in the wrong time zones???
we plan to pursue charges and collect payment for damages, including damages to our reputation.
Translation: we're going to sue everyone we possibly can, because the papers were correct, our position is publicly indefensible, and the only resource we have is lawyers and money to threaten people with like mafia leg-breakers.
This from the same money-laundering front group (I call them this as they REFUSE to disclose their donor list) who commissioned bogus "studies" to try to claim cigarette smoke isn't dangerous.
One big thing you leave out: Intel stepped up their anti-competitive behavior, buying off the big computer makers to get them to cancel AMD-based computer lines.
Dell had the Optiplex 740 line. It was a damn good line, very effective, came in $150 under an "equivalent" Intel computer. What was Intel's response? They stepped up their monopolist subsidization and got Dell to back down. Repeat for a number of other manufacturers, and AMD's stuck in a bind again.
1. Repeal DMCA. 1a - codify the right to backup to secure one's purchase against accident as a fundamental, protected consumer RIGHT. 2. Constitutionally amend to remove corporate personhood. 3. Return copyright to sane bounds, possibly bounds based on the life of the medium it is published in (it is absurd that computer programs, coded for hardware that was obsolete and almost impossible to find 5 years after the writing of the software, are copyrighted till doomsday).
In regards to the question of whether the states were allowed to create laws contradicting federal law, and allowed to secede when they didn't like federal decisions... actually I think losing that fight very much lost them the argument!
Cell phone companies are often caught doing this - and the worse part is they've been caught LYING and claiming the fees are federally mandated when in many cases, the fees are pure bullshit and connected to no tax or regulation whatsoever!
The assholes who pulled this shit in Wisconsin (yes, Republican corruption in WI does predate Scott Walker, he's just the most obvious to date). The owners of several soccer teams in the SW USA lately... according to news, the Houston Dynamo most recently extorted money from Harris County for theirs.
Proving that megacorps have more rights than people... I'll believe corporations are people when texas successfully executes one.
Till then: - You commit a felony, you go to jail and lose your voting rights. - Corporation commits a felony: no jail time, a pittance of a settlement/fine, and they still have the right to buy off elected representatives with unlimited campaign contributions.
And what happened? Seems prior to 150 years ago, a bunch of states decided they were functionally separate countries anyways. Hell, when they were told they weren't separate countries, they tried to secede!
Then even after that, they kept enacting laws that went against the constitution. And kept trying to tell the federal government, which was enforcing the national laws, to sod off.
It's no coincidence that the Tea Party happens to be at its strongest in the segregationist southeast...
Added bonus: no more counties/states saying "well we'll add an 0.1% sales tax to pay for Mr. Multibillionaire Asshole and his collection of multimillionaire thug asshole ball-tossers to have a stadium and yet still charge $75 a ticket for people to watch them throw a ball around."
Mostly just the conservatives. They've been trying to reenact Laisseiz-Faire ever since the 1930s when we threw that broken shit out for causing a depression.
Fast-forward to now: they caused another depression (by repealing Glass-Steagall in 1998 and removing most of the other regs when George Dumbya Shrub and the republican congress were doing things unchecked 2001-2007), and they're currently trying to blame the depression they caused on the black guy.
But those aren't available (to my knowledge). One must wonder why.
The answer, since you are wondering why, is that you're an uneducated fool who didn't do the little bit of looking required. Thankfully, GameboyRMH has stepped up and provided you with links to explore.
By revelation of these emails, Fred Singer's respect in peer reviewed literature has dropped to slightly lower than the asshole liars who used to publish "peer reviewed" studies backed by tobacco companies claiming that tobacco smoke isn't related to cancer...
A couple of months ago my Xbox360 updated itself and I got: a fucked up user interface, a bunch of shit based on a shitty interface (Kinect) that I refuse to shell out $150 for, and a bunch of app crap that I never used. I'm unimpressed and MS can go fuck themselves.
AFAIK, the things the Wii has added: - one or two channels (never gave a crap about them really). Not sure if channels qualify as "OS" since they are just apps like any Wii Store game. - SDHC memory card support... sorta. - "Play game from memory card"... works sorta, only if you keep enough of your Wii's tiny 512MB internal storage free to allow for swap space. - Control drivers for the "Wii MotionPlus", which is the cheapest, chintziest way of adding gravity sensing using a tuning fork gyroscope... I mean seriously, would a couple accelerometers with decent sensitivity be too much to ask? I've got a joystick from the year 2000 that has better motion sensitivity than a Wiimote + Motionplus working together. Sheesh.
Slashdot Mirror
Wouldn't that be an indication that the software is massively overpriced to begin with?
I have another question to the anonymous devloper: Have you considered NOT being an asshole about it?
Yes, your software turned up on TPB. So has software from Microsoft, and from Adobe, and from Bethesda, and from... well pretty much every software company on the fucking planet. So your first job is to get over yourself and realize that all that has to happen is for someone to crack or strip out your copy protection once, and that's that, the DRM is meaningless and a wasted cost to you.
Now, have you considered building up brand loyalty instead? Reward your paying customers with support, treat them well, maybe give them access to beta or updates if they want. Focus on making your software the best you can, and making your customers feel like their investment in your software is worth it.
Now let's look at your NEXT proposal: Would it be insane to release a 'not for commercial use' copy that does some spying and reporting on you, along with a spy-free version for ~$10,000? I feel like that would reduce the incentive to crack the paid version - Yes, it would be insane. Anyone who doesn't want to be spied on is going to block the damn thing via firewall, or they'll crack the unpaid version and route all its traffic to 127.0.0.1 or dev/null.
Or this: Some of our potential paying customers are using it without paying - face it, if they're not paying now, you are either charging too much or they'll be just as happy with freely available alternatives that either cost less or are completely free-to-them.
, and some non-potential customers are using it without paying. - If they're not a potential customer, why do you give a rat's ass? Again, they'll just go to some other source or use some other free (to them, whether actually free or not) program.
Chances are, 90% of the software's functions that these people are using are duplicated already by Virtualdub (Free/Opensource) and Windows Live Movie Maker (Not open source but free to anyone with Windows). If you want to make sales, try not being an asshole, price your program appropriately, and treat your customers as customers with whom you want to build loyalty.
Oh, and by the way: a legit copy of Adobe Premiere Elements 10, which probably does everything your software does and then some, is available for somewhere between $70 and $130 online right now. $10,000 for your suite? No fucking way it's even close to that cost.
Shhh. The CEO might hear you and realize that's not a cup holder!
He was confirming and reinforcing his own bias. It's ad hominem; he was marginalizing his perceived opponents.
Or, he's known enough hunters to know that that's what a good number of them do - wander out into the woods, get at least mildly "lubricated", and go "hunting."
Where I grew up it wasn't the pigeons, it was deer season. I don't really mind it - deer in the cities are dangerous in multiple ways. Plenty of fatalities from road collisions, plenty of issues with pets and people during mating season. I know of two people who got rid of ground floor bay windows due to it - it's quite a shock when a bull decides to try to put an antler through the glass thinking its reflection is a rival and starting a fight.
At least with deer season, we get the venison meat and it culls the herd enough that the city deer can be run out into the woods and don't get too tempted to come back once they integrate into the feral herd. But we still have problems with the hunting crowd - they do like getting drunk, and you can give them all the safety training classes and pass the "no hunting while drunk" laws (how do you enforce it? There's like one sheriff and one deputy in a 100 sqmile area!) all day long, you're still going to have a large percentage of them who are little more than bored, drunken wackjobs with loaded weapons.
"They" and "Them" was not an invention of the Left in America. Demonization of the "Other" was purely the Right's innovation. If you go over the history of the US since WWII, you'll find that the Left's approach has been, "Let's get as many people on board as possible" and the Right's approach has been, "We're being victimized by THEM".
At the risk of Godwinning the thread... the right wing got round to starting this not very long after a war involving Germany, Italy, and Japan was resolved... and their initial targets "just happened" to be blacks, jews, and "communists." Anyone else have a sneaking hunch whose plan they were thinking had worked so well in Europe for taking power?
Even so, if you look at tip of the spear of the Left in America currently, the Occupy Movement, there is still an effort to invite and include the tea party and disaffected poor white working class people (which has been surprisingly effective, by the way). How inviting were the Tea Party to people who were pro-choice or pro-union or pro gay marriage.
Dunno about those groups, but I've gone to a couple events (4th of July celebrations last year) that were swarming with Tea Party folks... they were busy getting drunk as shit and started shouting racist crap and spitting at a friend of mine who's latino, despite the fact that my friend's family presence in the USA predates the entrance of Texas into the country.
If one says "Obama is a liberal" the next will say, Obama is a tyrant, the next will say he's Hitler, and the next will say he's the Antichrist (though, to be fair, "Antichrist" is usually where they run out of steam, because it's hard to top that one
Actually, that's about the time that the dumbasses start insinuating Obama's either a muslim, or start calling him a "marxist socialist."
And who the fuck is "We", white man? You got a mouse in your pocket? And who are YOU and your "WE" losing your country to, exactly? The liberals? You start out decrying how someone's comments are horrible because they talk about "THEY and THEM" and then you say, "We're losing OUR country". Do you even realize that the statement, "We're losing OUR country" is the very definition of pointing a finger and blaming, "THEY and THEM"? "We're losing OUR country" has zero meaning unless there is a THEM that you are demonizing. So who the fuck are you losing YOUR country to, exactly?
Apparently, Mr. Racist Redneck Retard is losing "his" country to actual Americans...
Right wing followup:
When you have neither the law, nor the facts, nor the table in your favor, get a lawyer to hold a gun to someone's back and tell your opponent to shut up or you'll bankrupt them in legal fees defending yourself anyways.
This is the problem of the current state of US law. It doesn't MATTER if you have the law in your favor, or the facts in your favor, provided the other side has enough money to make you waste all of yours defending yourself in court against spurious motions and threats.
The innocent have nothing to fear, yes, I know that.
Actually, what the innocent still have to fear is HI acting like every other right wing shill group. They have two things on their side: money and lawyers. They can bankrupt an innocent person through the act of barratry and as a corrupt right wing shill group whose previous exploits involve funding faked studies to do things like claim cigarette smoke isn't dangerous, they've already shown that they have no moral compass stopping them from doing so.
If they fear commenting on these documents to such a degree, I have to ask why,
See above. If they get exposed so blatantly, they might have to fold. And the people writing for them might have to find real work rather than being right wing shills.
Second, the whole climate change is bunk movement's claim is that politics is being played, and you can't trust the results saying it is happening. We have a memo here implying that politics might be being played, and research/motives to be questioned. Revealing this is grounds for being sued.
Third, lawsuits potentially coming? Even ignoring the chilling effect, do we really need to reach that stage of escalation int his subject where every time someone speaks for one side the other side begins suing?
They are all attacking the messengers and trying to cease the message. They have yet to put out anything to show these are false. Just silencing the people trying to talk about this.
Right wing shillery RELIES on two things: the echo chamber and the chilling effect. Ever noticed how a Fox News viewer screams about the "liberal media" nonstop? It's because if they ever listened to both sides, they'd realize their side's argument is more full of holes than a loaf of aged swiss cheese.
Your case would be much, much stronger if you weren't quoting Megan "Koch Shill" McArdle.
And your claims are contradictory and easily questioned:
Every document in the bundle except the strategy memo and an IRS document was printed to PDF in the central time zone. The IRS document was printed to PDF in GMT-4. The strategy memo was scanned in with an Epson scanner to a PDF by someone in the Pacific time zone.
Yes, because everyone in a "Think Tank" works in the same monolithic building and lives within 5 miles of each other. Oh wait - no, they don't. They spread all around. "Think Tanks" , especially corrupt corporate shill tanks like Heartland Institute, hire supposed "experts" from wherever they can get them, and they trade on the reputations of their members' day jobs to falsely claim legitimacy.
All documents except the strategy memo and a board directory were printed to PDF on January 16, the day before a board meeting.
Oh my gosh - someone printed a board directory AFTER the board meeting? SCANDALOUS! And they even did it in the central time zone, the same as some of the other documents... wait, weren't you just arguing that the previous IRS and Strategy documents were illegitimate because they were scanned/printed in the wrong time zones???
In short, you're full of horse shit.
we plan to pursue charges and collect payment for damages, including damages to our reputation.
Translation: we're going to sue everyone we possibly can, because the papers were correct, our position is publicly indefensible, and the only resource we have is lawyers and money to threaten people with like mafia leg-breakers.
This from the same money-laundering front group (I call them this as they REFUSE to disclose their donor list) who commissioned bogus "studies" to try to claim cigarette smoke isn't dangerous.
One big thing you leave out: Intel stepped up their anti-competitive behavior, buying off the big computer makers to get them to cancel AMD-based computer lines.
Dell had the Optiplex 740 line. It was a damn good line, very effective, came in $150 under an "equivalent" Intel computer. What was Intel's response? They stepped up their monopolist subsidization and got Dell to back down. Repeat for a number of other manufacturers, and AMD's stuck in a bind again.
1. Repeal DMCA.
1a - codify the right to backup to secure one's purchase against accident as a fundamental, protected consumer RIGHT.
2. Constitutionally amend to remove corporate personhood.
3. Return copyright to sane bounds, possibly bounds based on the life of the medium it is published in (it is absurd that computer programs, coded for hardware that was obsolete and almost impossible to find 5 years after the writing of the software, are copyrighted till doomsday).
Anyone else have items to add?
In regards to the question of whether the states were allowed to create laws contradicting federal law, and allowed to secede when they didn't like federal decisions... actually I think losing that fight very much lost them the argument!
Cell phone companies are often caught doing this - and the worse part is they've been caught LYING and claiming the fees are federally mandated when in many cases, the fees are pure bullshit and connected to no tax or regulation whatsoever!
...they could turn New York into the economic equivalent of Mississippi in about 3 hours if they chose to.
FTFY.
Jerry Jones.
The assholes who pulled this shit in Wisconsin (yes, Republican corruption in WI does predate Scott Walker, he's just the most obvious to date).
The owners of several soccer teams in the SW USA lately... according to news, the Houston Dynamo most recently extorted money from Harris County for theirs.
How about this?
Proving that megacorps have more rights than people... I'll believe corporations are people when texas successfully executes one.
Till then:
- You commit a felony, you go to jail and lose your voting rights.
- Corporation commits a felony: no jail time, a pittance of a settlement/fine, and they still have the right to buy off elected representatives with unlimited campaign contributions.
Anyone else disgusted?
Damn I wish I hadn't already commented, you'd definitely get a mod-up.
And what happened? Seems prior to 150 years ago, a bunch of states decided they were functionally separate countries anyways. Hell, when they were told they weren't separate countries, they tried to secede!
Then even after that, they kept enacting laws that went against the constitution. And kept trying to tell the federal government, which was enforcing the national laws, to sod off.
It's no coincidence that the Tea Party happens to be at its strongest in the segregationist southeast...
Added bonus: no more counties/states saying "well we'll add an 0.1% sales tax to pay for Mr. Multibillionaire Asshole and his collection of multimillionaire thug asshole ball-tossers to have a stadium and yet still charge $75 a ticket for people to watch them throw a ball around."
Mostly just the conservatives. They've been trying to reenact Laisseiz-Faire ever since the 1930s when we threw that broken shit out for causing a depression.
Fast-forward to now: they caused another depression (by repealing Glass-Steagall in 1998 and removing most of the other regs when George Dumbya Shrub and the republican congress were doing things unchecked 2001-2007), and they're currently trying to blame the depression they caused on the black guy.
But those aren't available (to my knowledge). One must wonder why.
The answer, since you are wondering why, is that you're an uneducated fool who didn't do the little bit of looking required. Thankfully, GameboyRMH has stepped up and provided you with links to explore.
AGW has this.
You've just been living under a rock and not paying attention to the overwhelming number of papers confirming it.
By revelation of these emails, Fred Singer's respect in peer reviewed literature has dropped to slightly lower than the asshole liars who used to publish "peer reviewed" studies backed by tobacco companies claiming that tobacco smoke isn't related to cancer...
A couple of months ago my Xbox360 updated itself and I got: a fucked up user interface, a bunch of shit based on a shitty interface (Kinect) that I refuse to shell out $150 for, and a bunch of app crap that I never used. I'm unimpressed and MS can go fuck themselves.
AFAIK, the things the Wii has added:
- one or two channels (never gave a crap about them really). Not sure if channels qualify as "OS" since they are just apps like any Wii Store game.
- SDHC memory card support... sorta.
- "Play game from memory card"... works sorta, only if you keep enough of your Wii's tiny 512MB internal storage free to allow for swap space.
- Control drivers for the "Wii MotionPlus", which is the cheapest, chintziest way of adding gravity sensing using a tuning fork gyroscope... I mean seriously, would a couple accelerometers with decent sensitivity be too much to ask? I've got a joystick from the year 2000 that has better motion sensitivity than a Wiimote + Motionplus working together. Sheesh.
What else did I miss? Anything? Bueller? Bueller?