Regardless of how you feel about it, the TRO was proper. There is a chance that Sony could win its case and whatever damages they are alleging would certainly continue during the trial if not constrained. That's all there is to a TRO. It's only "indefinite" in the sense that the trial itself has no predictable end date.
Now of course from a purely logical standpoint the cat is already out of the bag and the TRO is pretty damn stupid, but the courts don't necessarily work on logic, just law and procedure. Sony requested the TRO, the (admittedly lax) requirements are met, they got it. Big whoop. If he wants to turn up to contest the ex parte decision he can certainly do so, but he's not going to win.
Out of curiosity, did you have any intentions of actually making a cogent point or simply ranting about how evil government is?
You don't like government. We get it. Do you have anything valuable to say? Or, for that matter, anything other than "ZOMG THE EVUL GUB'MINTS!" to support your claims that their findings were a "fabrica[tion]", "charade" or "bullshit?" You didn't need to "start" with "I despise the governments." It permeated everything you said. In fact, it was the only thing you said.
Maybe you're even right. But unless you can provide something other than "I hate the government zomgwtfbbq!" then the only bullshit charade I see is your post, masquerading as insightful. Put up or shut up.
One thing I'd like to add is that I think a lot of calls about hacking are related to lag. Sometimes you're lagging and it's impossible not to know; your screen is lagging, people are teleporting out in front of you, things like that. But I've also had a lot of occasions where I say in Vent to a guy I'm playing with, "I think I'm lagging." There's that point in lag where it's actually hard to tell. Usually I realize it when I try to knife people and repeatedly get owned, or I watch the killcam and know that I shot more blasts on my screen than they see on theirs.
I remember just three days ago, there was a guy raging as we were watching him get killed as the final death in the game. "Bull...shit.... I.... shooting... at...... you." How he was lagging THAT much and didn't know I'm not sure, but he obviously didn't. Of course in this particular guy's case all I wanted to do is strangle him. We have a bit of a history (and no, I wasn't the one who killed him that time). He's one of those guys I end up randomly in games with a lot, and he ALWAYS calls SOMEBODY a hacker. Very often it's a friend I tend to play with, who I know without a doubt is not hacking. Often it's me. If not, it's somebody else. The joke between that friend and me is "anybody who managed to kill him is a hacker." He even has a clan-mate who is just as bad or worse (though I run into him far less). We once played a game against the two of them where I went into a warehouse with my shotgun out, and strafed back and forth behind a doorway and shot three of his team members to death while he stared out the window looking the other way, completely oblivious to it (because hearing a shotgun mowing down three of your teammates directly behind you is hard, right?). When they were down I went into the room and shot him in the back of the head. "If you wall again I'm going to kick you!" "Or you could stop sucking and realize when your entire team is being shot to death behind you." He shut up for that game and got owned, but when we were about to win the next game (7300/7500 points--two kills away) the server mysteriously shut down. We hit find game again. I don't remember if we got directly back into a game with him or if it was a couple later, but it eventually happened and the server mysteriously disconnected at 7400 points to a win this time. Apparently anybody who kills anybody in that ENTIRE CLAN must be a hacker. The hilarious part is I'm not a very good player either. Lifetime I'm still working my way out of a hole toward a 1:1 kill:death ratio.
Anyway, the short version is I agree: In all the time I've spent playing, I've seen probably several hundred people called hackers and only seen a handful of ACTUAL hackers, most of whom were extremely obvious. Like the guy that was invisible and had red boxes around all the enemies even though he wasn't using one of the air support options. Who then popped an AC130 and mysteriously had no cooldown on his biggest gun. Or the one (actually on my team) who would smash his face into a ridge that divides the middle of a particular map with a sniper rifle, zoom in and one-shot everybody -- even though you can't see through that ridge. Or the one who was shooting at me through a building from literally across the map two seconds after I spawned and before I had done anything that could possibly have given away my location. But ultimately, every one of these guys has ultimately ended up banned, and sometimes when you look a player up and see he has been playing for 400-500 hours and hasn't been banned you have to concede that they're just that much better than you. Very few people, of course, actually do.
the dividing line between middle class and rich had been left at the same dollars/year amount for decades [. ..] Same percentage of poor, lower percentage of middle class? [. ..] this is a huge problem that must be corrected?
Haven't you just explained it yourself? People, on average, WILL make more money in the future than they make now in absolute terms. The question is whether that remains true in relative terms. Making a million dollars a week matters very little if a loaf of bread costs two million.
So the fact that the line between middle class and rich is the same dollar amount for decades means that yes, as time goes by more people will technically fall on the "rich" side of the line -- but since that number is not being adjusted for inflation, it's only in absolute terms. They may or may not be any "richer" than they were decades before in a relative sense. And in fact, calling people rich because they pass a metric for what rich was 30 years ago is dangerous. It leads to well-intentioned but ultimately damaging ideas, like increasing taxes on those people because they "can afford to pay more."
I honestly don't understand your post, so much so that I serious wonder if I am missing something. You talk about people "moaning" about the "persistence of poverty" and then claim that poverty is staying the same. Well, what, then, is persistance? And of course you bring a terribly important claim that the line between middle class and rich hasn't changed with inflation and then claim that middle class people becoming rich-except-not-really-lulz is not a huge problem that needs to be corrected. Of course it does, before these people who aren't really rich start getting treated as if they are.
It reminds me of an episode of West Wing. I'll have to paraphrase (particularly the numbers) because I can't remember the exact wording, but there was a suggestion that there be a new formula put in place to determine the poverty line and an exchange that went roughly like this:
Toby: "You mean to tell me there's 50,000 more poor people?"
Sam: "They've always been poor, Toby, we're just calling them that."
T: "Why don't we just call everybody who makes over $100,000 rich, and everybody who makes under $100,000 middle class?"
S: "Then they would all be Republicans, wouldn't they?"
These labels... they're artificial, but not meaningless. The government calling somebody poor makes them eligible for all sorts of programs, and calling them rich may very well subject them to more burdens. If that's the system we want, that's fine -- but it only works if poor people are actually poor and rich people are actually rich. If it's not the case, it is a very big problem and absolutely needs to be fixed.
Beyond that, it's worth noting that these labels are awfully huge swathes of humanity. "Rich" includes people making a penny more than the cutoff as well as a million dollars more, and "poor" is anything from a person who doesn't make a dime to one who makes one cent under the limit. For a one person household, the 2009 poverty line was $10,830. Pretending that if you make $11,000 that you're in the same city much less the same ballpark as somebody making $99,999 (still "middle class") is delusional. "The middle class is disappearing" is about more than just which segment of these largely arbitrary lines people fall in. It's about the gap between rich and poor--not the boundaries, but the people. It's about whether or not these middle class or even faux-rich people actually have more spending power than they did years ago or less. It's quite the complicated issue, to be certain.
You know, I was going to give this a troll moderation but it's so ridiculously bad, and thus full of such delicious irony with a failed troll talking about somebody else failing, that I couldn't bring myself to do it.
Actually it's worse than that. GS is ONE investor. They can sell stakes in that investment to 499 people or 4.9 million people and it doesn't change anything for Facebook.
Whether it's ultimately legal or not is questionable; that it is an attempt to circumvent the law, however, is undeniable.
Also, I'm pretty sure this offering is limited to a few high net worth individuals/hedge funds/etc, because Zuckerberg et al need to keep the number of public shareholders at or below 499 to avoid having to make a whole bunch of public disclosures and comply with other US regulatory nonsense designed to protect people from themselves.
Yeah, but good news. Facebook found "one" investor willing to pay $1.5B. Of course that "one" investor is going to sell stakes in its "one" investment to hundreds or thousands of other people, but still. I mean, isn't that great? Facebook still has 498 slots open before they have to comply with "US regulatory nonsense" like, you know, informing would-be investors about how their company is actually doing. Fucking bunch of communists over at the SEC, man. Always stomping on small businesses like Goldman Sachs and companies valuated at $50 billion all on some ludicrous notion that investors should be informed as to what they might be investing in.
I see what you're trying to do and I frankly agree with every example you gave... except for the guns.
What, exactly, is the non-violent purpose to guns that I am missing? Best as I can tell, their purpose is violence and murder. Sometimes it's with good intentions; shooting that burglar in the face protects your belongings and your family, but I would be hard pressed not to identify it as violent. Same thing with wars; sometimes they need to be fought, but they are violent in the extreme. Policemen shooting criminals to protect themselves? That's violence too, in the same way that if somebody hits you and you hit them back you're both engaging in violence -- even if one of you is right and one of you is wrong. And those are, frankly, the legitimate purpose of guns. We haven't even touched on the true violence and murder.
The only use I can think of for a gun that might not be violence--and I'm still torn on this--is hunting, and even then, in this day and age, hunting is more about people wanting to go outside and play with their guns than it is out of any necessity of providing for one's family. Getting meat is far simpler, safer and quite cheap from means that quite frankly treat the animals quite a bit better than hoping some idiot with a rifle hits them in an immediately-fatal instead of eventually-fatal place. And the fact that somebody might pay you to stuff that animal or make a coat out of its fur doesn't change the inherent nature of the act, just the intentions with which it is committed.
Are you simply defining anything that has good intentions as non-violent, or am I missing a use case here?
Even if they usually make good decisions, one has to allow for the possibility that that is not always the case. Google does not feel that it is, and the judge believes they have enough of a case to bring it to trial and to enjoin the Department of the Interior until that is complete.
Maybe they're wrong. Maybe it is from an abundance of caution. But really, if the process is valuable at all then people need to be made aware that they will be asked to account for it and for their decisions. Absent that, what is the point of it at all?
So if another developer, with a relatively polished release product, a rudimentary end-game already present, an interface as good as or better than WoW's and, preferably, a decent existing IP to base the game world on could launch in that window, then the might - just might - have a shot at derrailing the WoW juggernaut
The game you're looking for is called Rift, and it releases on March 1st. The interface is nearly identical (obviously it looks different but if you break it down into what pieces are actually there and where, you basically have WOW: Player frame, target frame, target of target, buffs list up at the top; map in the top-right corner; chat window lower left; action bars lower middle; bags right of that; right action bars on the side, etc etc). Some people will be turned off by it, but I was very impressed that they didn't set out to reinvent the wheel and that they were willing to stick with things from other games that worked well, like the interface of WOW--one thing they definitely got right, especially as they iterated on it. It is also the single most polished beta I have ever been a part of. I only found one serious bug in my time as a beta tester (certain? mobs would randomly de-aggro, run back where they came from and reset to full health); the rest were simple display issues. Gameplay is similar. They have talent trees, though they don't cal them that and instead of having three trees for a class you have four callings (mage, warrior, cleric, rogue) and each of those has 8 possible "souls" that essentially comprise one of your trees. From what I've seen you need to put a few points into a second tree because you are not allowed to have more points in a tree than your level, and you get 2 talent points every 3 levels, but whether you go hardcore after one tree or spread your points more evenly among two or three is up to you. Quests are like WOWs, including built-in quest tracing, there's battlegrounds ("waterfronts"), regular and heroic dungeons and raiding (none of which I have personally seen yet because the beta didn't let you get to max level; I could have done one dungeon but I felt I was a little under-level for it so I didn't before that beta window closed).
There's also their unique concept of rifts, essentially tears in the fabric between other planes and ours. When a rift opens, the object of players is to get over there and close it by completing a number of objectives: It usually starts out something like "kill 4 of these and 4 of those," then moves on to a boss phase, and if you do really well you get a bonus phase. You're also judged on your performance and given rewards accordingly. They're essentially random, outdoor mini-raids where you fight alongside other people who show up. If it's a much lower-level rift than you are, you might be able to close it yourself--provided that it's not a Major rift, which means the monster coming out are elite. "Elite" in this game is code for "oh shit, get help" unless you massively outlevel it. I remember attacking an elite who I was I believe 5 levels above and he three shot me, and I was a tank type. In any event, if players fail to close a rift in a certain amount of time they gain a foothold and they begin to launch invasions, which are essentially the same as rifts except they move and they like to go out and stomp nearby cities. Turning in a quest and finding your city under attack from an unchecked invasion is not uncommon, nor is logging out in a city and logging back in to find the enemy controls it. Then not only do you have to repel the invasions along similar lines, you have to go back and destroy their foothold so it doesn't spawn more. Supposedly, toward the end-game, the loot from these rifts sit somewhere between regular and heroic ("Tier 2") dungeons and again between regular and heroic raids, if I remember correctly.
I think it's a really good choice for people who didn't quit WOW because they hated it--in fact they liked it--but who are just
I have what would be described in science as a "fucking awful" voice. I remember playing with some VR technology a few years back and I couldn't even make it through the training. I adjusted my mic and everything like it asked and then got to the prompts: "Say 'dog.'" "Dog." "You said 'b93r.' Say 'dog.'" After six or seven tries of that kind of nonsense I pretty much gave up.
I was actually playing with a copy of Dragon Naturally Speaking a month or two ago and was surprised by how good it was. I could tell it was struggling with my voice; the instructions at the start of the training said that most people wouldn't need to read the whole story for the training to be comfortable, and I had to go all the way through and more, but it was pretty good. It could recognize whole sentences at a time, whereas previous technology couldn't even manage words. I finished up the training and busted open Word to give it a try (I could have trained it further but I was just playing with it) and it was very accurate. And this, quite obviously, is with a voice that gives VR technology fits and a general vocabulary where it couldn't even attempt to muff the results by choosing from known word lists.
I have little trouble believing that with a bit more training and a little more user training on my part (working to enunciate a little better, etc) that it could be a very capable means of entering information. Doubly so if the information I'm entering is predictable such that it has (for lack of a better term) a smaller dictionary to guess from.
VR is probably pitiful compared to where we thought we would be in 2010 years ago, but it's actually getting to be quite respectable.
First and foremost, the people buying more than they could afford. It's taboo to demonize "Main Street," but let's face it, if people could, or chose to, do basic math, they would have realized they couldn't afford what they were buying.
While that's not untrue, it's somewhat disingenuous. If people knew basic auto repair, they could save a lot of money on oil changes and auto mechanics. If people knew basic home improvement skills, they could save a lot of money on handymen and repair guys.
But most people don't, and in that void of ignorance, fear or indifference exists entire industries who we collectively tag with the sometimes laughable title of "professional." A person doing some basic math might have figured out they couldn't afford what they were buying (and you're grossly oversimplifying the problem, by the way), but instead they relied on a series of "professionals" to do it for them -- professionals who are paid handsomely, not only in terms of their own salaries but in terms of commissions (real estate) and interest (banks/mortgage companies). Both of these parties nodded their heads emphatically and declared "of COURSE you can afford this, don't worry about it! Sign here!"
They did it from simple greed, and from a misguided belief that eh, even if we have to boot these freeloaders out of their house we have some of their money in pocket and real estate prices keep going up so we won't lose THAT much when we sell it to the next sucker. Through their greed, and their staggering unprofessionalism, they essentially collapsed two entire industries with a trickle-down effect that collapsed even more; industries that survive today only through the intervention of the federal government, right or wrong.
Some extra personal accountability is certainly a good idea to protect ourselves, but when we hire or deal with professionals I don't think any sane person expects them to be so wholly unprofessional as to tank their entire industry. They don't deserve to be let off the hook for that, not to any degree, even if peoples' ignorance is what allows them to operate that way. Ignorance, and more importantly knowledge of their own ignorance, is precisely why people hire professionals in the first place (not that there is much option when we're talking about a mortgage, I admit).
That these idiots are distinct from equities traders I do not deny, though I also don't think they're quite as separate as you make them out to be.
You made a joke about the French being cowards and their women having too much hair! Hahahahahaha! That is both clever and original sir, i salute you! The only thing I can't understand is why you posted anonymously and denied yourself credit for such hilarity!
The fact that you can separate the two actions--requiring updates to access the Internet and play new media (and indeed, also to continue using applications that have not been updated themselves such as the Netflix App) and "agreeing" to the upgrade--makes me seriously question your logic. It is a tactic a half step removed from "that's a nice car, it would be a shame if anything happened to it." In fact, it may be worse. At least if I pay the nice man in the trenchcoat his protection money he leaves my car alone. Sony promises to break your PS3. The only choice they give you is whether you want to lose features you've already paid for or lose the ability to play new games or utilize any features of your old games that happen to use the Internet, such as multiplayer or, as in my case, a baseball game that provides roster updates throughout the year.
It's called coercion, and it is grounds to nullify even the most strenuously negotiated contracts much less a click-through EULA that doesn't even specify how they're fucking you, just that they might. They are going to take something from you--your ability to play new games and fully utilize your old purchases--for absolutely no technical reason other than people who probably aren't you are using their machines in a way that Sony disapproves of (homebrew, cheap computing cluster, etc), unless you "agree" to let them take out features you've already paid for. It's nothing but a bargaining chip to force you to do as they tell you to do.
Frankly even that is too generous; bargaining chip implies there is negotiation and intelligent thought before determining which is the best course of action. Turning down these updates and effectively bricking your PS3 from that point in time forward is no more a choice than not paying the man in the trenchcoat. Do you really think it's any consolation to people who got rid of their old PS2s because they have this lovely new PS3 with backward compatibility that they weren't fucked in the ass until they "agreed" to it? Oh but don't worry dear consumer, we'll slowly start to release them as downloads for $9.99 a pop! Everybody wins!
The PS3 was the most locked-down piece of consumer hardware in the history of computing. Do you truly believe this update requirement was done as anything other than a way to force you to do what they want and patch any holes that might arise--the exact behavior we have seen from them? No, it's not about an unspoken agreement to produce content; if they stopped making PS3 games tomorrow I would be upset, but I wouldn't have been fucked. They are actively breaking my hardware, for all intents and purposes, unless I let them have their way. At the bottom of every game I buy--on the disc AND the packaging--is a little "PS3" logo. The idea that one disc might work and another might not in my PS3 based on whether I've let them screw me yet is ludicrous, and so is claiming that it is somehow a choice.
It goes well beyond shady. The fact that it hasn't been absolutely clobbered in civil suits yet is stunning. The idea that any court in the world would see it as anything less than illegal coercion boggles the mind.
And not that it should matter, but lest you think my outrage is personally motivated: I did buy my machine with the expectation of using OtherOS, but after a while I realized I simply wasn't going to go through the hassle and the update didn't affect me on a personal level. Likewise, I paid $600 at PS3 launch so my PS3 has hardware backward-compatibility and I am not personally affected by their removal of the software backward-compatibility in later updates. That doesn't make either of those decisions any less of an outrage.
Okay. So Google can't patent word-of-mouth. Being as that is neither a website (which ALL of their examples are and which they explicitly claim), is not across multiple social networks even if it were, and doesn't meet the claims of the patent that are ACTUALLY patented and not the abstract describing in generic terms what it is about, I fail to see what value you think your post has.
If you don't know how patents work or what prior art is, that's fine. Don't post acting as if you do. The seemingly-contagious Slashdot idiocy regarding patents has gotten old and adds nothing whatsoever to any discussion of the important issues surrounding patents and IP law.
Uhm. How, exactly, is a DDOS legitimate correspondence? Particularly when we know it was a DDOS and there were tools distributed to participate in it?
Web server communication is request-response. You don't communicate with it, you simply ask it to return a resource and it returns it. You think these people were, what? All trying to mirror Mastercard and PayPal in case somebody was going to retaliate against them? And were going to helpfully "mirror" Amazon but then decided that they were too big to, uh, mirror?
Please. It might not be proof beyond a reasonable doubt, but we certainly know what their intentions were.
If "rape" does not mean "violence," then we should not throw rapists in prison.
Why not? Protecting society is certainly one of the biggest reasons that somebody should be incarcerated, but there are certainly others: Punishment. Deterrence. Rehabilitation. There are all sorts of crimes for which people are and should be sent to prison that don't involve violence. Theft certainly ranks high among them; it's been something recognized as a serious crime pretty such as long as societies have existed. Fraud would be another. I'm sure you can think of others.
Like I said, a line has to be drawn somewhere, and in my opinion, we are being far too liberal with the use of the word "rape" when it comes to Assange's actions.
Lines are drawn in specific places. It's done on a per-society basis. We call them "laws."
In Sweden, they believe that Assange's actions violate those laws. They still need to convince a court that he actually did those actions and that the actions do violate the law; that burden is on them. But if they bring him to trial and the verdict comes back guilty, you need to step back and acknowledge peoples' right to a different opinion than yours. Especially different societies.
Second, I'm not sure where you're getting your information that people do things like this all the time or a lot of people do them or even that few people would call them rape. Claiming it does not make it true, nor does your anecdote that an ex-girlfriend did one of these things to you and you didn't call the police so clearly it can't be rape. How are most of these issues different from spousal rape, where a husband just assumes by virtue of being married that he has consent to fuck his wife whenever he wants? Hell, I would find that more defensible than fucking somebody who specifically is telling you no and yet it's still outlawed in most countries of the world. (See the spousal rape article on Wikipedia if you want a citation.)
From my personal opinion, I find almost all of the things you listed should be rape. There are any number of perfectly valid reasons that a person might withdraw consent (tell the person to stop) after sex begins. What if he is hurting her? What if she was only interested in vaginal sex and are suddenly taking it up the ass? What if he refuses to use a condom? What if he suddenly becomes an asshole she would never have consented to have sex with ("shut the fuck up bitch or I'll beat your fucking brains out!")? What if he starts handcuffing her to the bed or choking her because he likes it kinky? Can you honestly claim you believe any of those situations that a guy should be able to continue right on fucking the person and it be legally okay? Even "eh, I changed my mind" works for me. I would fucking HATE IT and probably never have anything to do with the woman again if she pulled it on me, but the idea that there is any reason or any point at which I can say I get to have my penis in somebody who doesn't want it there... well, I deserve whatever I get.
Having sex with somebody who is asleep is an even easier case. Just because somebody consents to sex that night doesn't mean they consent to even more sex in the morning, and there is no reason that anybody should be able to fuck somebody without their consent and it be okay -- especially when the person is not even conscious to know who is doing them how or why, much less agree to it. You want to have more sex? No problem. Wake her up and ask. She screwed you last night, chances are she'll screw you again in the morning. Not even asking? Holy crap. "But gosh, I didn't want to wake her up or anything!" Talk about the definition of a selfish bastard -- in all possible ways.
The only iffy one to me is continuing to have sex with a broken condom. If the woman knows it broke and says stop, see point #1 about withdrawing consent. If not, I think pr
"Tough luck, things have consequences!" the arrogant man who doesn't even have the nuts to post under an account declares.
Eh, I suppose consequences are okay as long as they only involve big countries you don't like, money and lives and not really important things like Slashdot karma.
No. None of the schedules would be patentable (for several reasons), but the methodology of your random tournament generator might be. (I would hope not, but who the hell knows!)
The problem is basically this: In NCAA football, unlike pretty much every other sport, there is a quirk. Most playoff systems function where the top N teams by record get in and then play against each other in elimination rounds, usually with team 1 playing team N, team 2 playing team N-1, etc. But not NCAA football.
Instead they have the BCS (Bowl Championship Series) system. It's basically a secret formula that assigns a score to each team, then they pair teams off to each play in a single "bowl" game. No secondary rounds. Record is part of the formula, but only part. It's more important WHO you play and the result than it is what your actual record is. For example, playing strong teams is weighted more highly than playing weak teams, beating a team you're "supposed" to beat means less than beating teams who are supposed to beat you, absolutely dominating an opponent means more than squeaking by with a win, and, though they try to hide it and obscure it, the reality is that big schools with metric crap-tons of money get higher ratings than small teams. It's controversial, because it often results in teams who have better record not making it or being rated in worse places -- which means they play in a worse bowl game, get less potential revenue, less exposure, etc etc, and because to the best of my knowledge they don't actually tell you what the formula is. Each week they simply release a new set of numbers and that's the ranking.
What would be patentable (and might be patented) is their formula; the specific way they rate the teams to determine who gets in and at what position (and thus what bowl game). So would alternate methods of determining that. You could try to patent the regular old "top N records get in" system but it would fail and also require all sorts of tie-breaker conditions. (Oh god do I hope it would fail.) Somebody is proposing an alternate system to the BCS, and a third person is claiming that he already holds a patent that would apply to it. Is it true? I don't know. Would it hold up in court? I don't know. But that's where we are.
And of course even with publicity, the more common the scheme becomes the less valuable it's going to be to any individual group.
I can say I've bought a number of games on sale from Steam over the past month or so (and particularly the past few days). Two for $20, two for $10, two for $5. Three of those were games I knew nothing about; one was recommended by a friend, and the other two were me looking at the prices, looking at the game descriptions and screenshots and going "hell, that looks like it's worth the money." In that same time period I've bought 0 games priced over that amount. But really, if somebody bludgeoned me over the head and said "welcome to the demand curve" they would be right. The cheaper shit is, the more of it I am willing to buy. This is no surprise.
How does this apply to "pay what you want" schemes? The same. You'll get a lot more sales at a lot less dollars. So will it work? Ultimately I think it depends on the project. If you're selling something that only costs a few hundred thousand dollars to make, you could do nicely for yourself. A lot of $1 and $5 showings would add up fairly quickly. If you're making a mega-budget, top-of-the-line video game with a $50,000,000 budget, you're going to have a lot of trouble recouping that cost, particularly as more and more publishers take up the scheme and the novelty and publicity wears off.
Likewise, the more successful something is beforehand the better it can do. If a successful band uses this scheme, even with only $1 a pop they could make quite a strong return. They'll have a lot of sales and only a moderate production cost to overcome. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 sold about 20 million copies last year. Assuming you could have done slightly better with a pay-as-you-go scheme, let's say 25 million sales at an average of $3 (mostly a mix of $1 and $5) -- about $75MM. Does that recoup the costs? I don't know, but it would have to be pretty close at the least. Chances are it does. Big game houses aren't going to become uber-rich on a scheme like this, but assuming there is a decent market for their game it seems as though they could at least fund development and make some profits like that, and that's a very big deal.
The bottom line is there will be more pieces taken out of a similar-sized pie. If I usually spend $150 (about 3 games) per year, I'm probably not going to spend significantly more than that with nothing but pay-what-you-want schemes; rather, I'm going to get more for it. Depending on how much I allocate to each thing I purchase, I might even run out of things I want enough to pay for them. As always, there will be people it works for and people it doesn't. Previous success will be an advantage, small production costs will be an advantage. Is it the future? For small publishers, probably so, especially for their first titles. For big firms of whatever medium, probably not. They want the profits, both selfishly and to absorb risks and failures in other areas.
If you want to say "The government gives the network providers all sorts of tax-breaks and subsidies, so we get to have a say in how it's run", you fail, because your lawmakers didn't tie those sorts of conditions into those subsidies and tax-breaks, and you don't get to play Darth Vader and "alter the deal, pray I don't alter it any further" down the road.
Of couse we can, and there are all sorts of ways of going about it, directly or indirectly, if that's what we choose to do: Simply regulating it the way we want it, almost sure to pass constitutional muster; attack them with anti-trust regulations, since backbone providers are clear (natural) monopolies; torpedo their other interests unless they agree to do what we want (you want to acquire such-and-such company or get access to new spectrum for your cell technology? -- nope!); targeted taxes or fees that will be waived for compliance with certain rules (if you didn't read the word "mammoth" into this sentence, try again); revoke or tax their use of the public right of way for non-compliance. And that's about fifteen seconds off the top of my head.
That it might not sit right with you from your personal set of morals and your particular view of the right of the government is irrelevant to what we can do. If you think otherwise, to borrow your phrase, you fail. (A phrase, by the way, that you can take right back to World of Warcraft where self-righteous idiocy like that belongs.)
Convenience is certainly a big factor in Internet play's favor but it has little to do with growing up. It is shifting technology that enables that convenience and increases its value, combined with, well, money. The Internet in 1997 is not nearly as ubiquitous as it is today; Internet play is now the expectation. Playing in the same room with friends is great if you happen to have friends in the same room, but if you don't it's nice to be able to hop online and play with them or even with strangers. That's true for children with swathes of free time as well as adults. If multiplayer is a valuable feature--and we can see pretty much all the most popular games have a multiplayer component--then it is that much more valuable if I can use that feature any time I want rather than when my friends happen to be around.
So now the publishers are faced with two options: Including multiplayer but not Internet play is not a real option, so they can either support Internet play AND LAN-style play or just one or the other. The former takes less development and QA time and will still appeal to the vast majority of its fanbase that it would have otherwise; the latter takes more time and money and might bring in a handful of people who have no interest in the single-player or Internet play but want the LAN abilities. It's not a hard stretch to see why they choose the former more than the latter.
Of course, there's another reason too. Not only does Internet play increase sales in general, it reduces piracy. Pirating the single player version of a game is easy, and lots of people do it, but most of those games have no multiplayer abilities when pirated. Pirating a game with LAN play still allows LAN play, reducing any incentive for a legitimate copy to those who are inclined to pirate it otherwise. Connecting to the Internet is either impossible with pirated copies or dangerous. Do you really want your pirated copy of Black Ops dialing up the game company's servers? For many, a single player copy of the game for $0 is plenty and that will be that, but for some, that $30-60 to enable Internet play will be worth it.
More control, less expenditures, more profits... does the article author really have trouble understanding where split-screen has gone?
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Regardless of how you feel about it, the TRO was proper. There is a chance that Sony could win its case and whatever damages they are alleging would certainly continue during the trial if not constrained. That's all there is to a TRO. It's only "indefinite" in the sense that the trial itself has no predictable end date.
Now of course from a purely logical standpoint the cat is already out of the bag and the TRO is pretty damn stupid, but the courts don't necessarily work on logic, just law and procedure. Sony requested the TRO, the (admittedly lax) requirements are met, they got it. Big whoop. If he wants to turn up to contest the ex parte decision he can certainly do so, but he's not going to win.
Out of curiosity, did you have any intentions of actually making a cogent point or simply ranting about how evil government is?
You don't like government. We get it. Do you have anything valuable to say? Or, for that matter, anything other than "ZOMG THE EVUL GUB'MINTS!" to support your claims that their findings were a "fabrica[tion]", "charade" or "bullshit?" You didn't need to "start" with "I despise the governments." It permeated everything you said. In fact, it was the only thing you said.
Maybe you're even right. But unless you can provide something other than "I hate the government zomgwtfbbq!" then the only bullshit charade I see is your post, masquerading as insightful. Put up or shut up.
A nice post.
One thing I'd like to add is that I think a lot of calls about hacking are related to lag. Sometimes you're lagging and it's impossible not to know; your screen is lagging, people are teleporting out in front of you, things like that. But I've also had a lot of occasions where I say in Vent to a guy I'm playing with, "I think I'm lagging." There's that point in lag where it's actually hard to tell. Usually I realize it when I try to knife people and repeatedly get owned, or I watch the killcam and know that I shot more blasts on my screen than they see on theirs.
I remember just three days ago, there was a guy raging as we were watching him get killed as the final death in the game. "Bull...shit.... I .... shooting... at...... you." How he was lagging THAT much and didn't know I'm not sure, but he obviously didn't. Of course in this particular guy's case all I wanted to do is strangle him. We have a bit of a history (and no, I wasn't the one who killed him that time). He's one of those guys I end up randomly in games with a lot, and he ALWAYS calls SOMEBODY a hacker. Very often it's a friend I tend to play with, who I know without a doubt is not hacking. Often it's me. If not, it's somebody else. The joke between that friend and me is "anybody who managed to kill him is a hacker." He even has a clan-mate who is just as bad or worse (though I run into him far less). We once played a game against the two of them where I went into a warehouse with my shotgun out, and strafed back and forth behind a doorway and shot three of his team members to death while he stared out the window looking the other way, completely oblivious to it (because hearing a shotgun mowing down three of your teammates directly behind you is hard, right?). When they were down I went into the room and shot him in the back of the head. "If you wall again I'm going to kick you!" "Or you could stop sucking and realize when your entire team is being shot to death behind you." He shut up for that game and got owned, but when we were about to win the next game (7300/7500 points--two kills away) the server mysteriously shut down. We hit find game again. I don't remember if we got directly back into a game with him or if it was a couple later, but it eventually happened and the server mysteriously disconnected at 7400 points to a win this time. Apparently anybody who kills anybody in that ENTIRE CLAN must be a hacker. The hilarious part is I'm not a very good player either. Lifetime I'm still working my way out of a hole toward a 1:1 kill:death ratio.
Anyway, the short version is I agree: In all the time I've spent playing, I've seen probably several hundred people called hackers and only seen a handful of ACTUAL hackers, most of whom were extremely obvious. Like the guy that was invisible and had red boxes around all the enemies even though he wasn't using one of the air support options. Who then popped an AC130 and mysteriously had no cooldown on his biggest gun. Or the one (actually on my team) who would smash his face into a ridge that divides the middle of a particular map with a sniper rifle, zoom in and one-shot everybody -- even though you can't see through that ridge. Or the one who was shooting at me through a building from literally across the map two seconds after I spawned and before I had done anything that could possibly have given away my location. But ultimately, every one of these guys has ultimately ended up banned, and sometimes when you look a player up and see he has been playing for 400-500 hours and hasn't been banned you have to concede that they're just that much better than you. Very few people, of course, actually do.
I don't know. I'm not sure the average driver could manage to pay less attention than they already do.
I don't know if it's hilarious or says something about me (or both), but I read that as "no one listened to my wanking."
I was puzzled why you seemed upset.
Haven't you just explained it yourself? People, on average, WILL make more money in the future than they make now in absolute terms. The question is whether that remains true in relative terms. Making a million dollars a week matters very little if a loaf of bread costs two million.
So the fact that the line between middle class and rich is the same dollar amount for decades means that yes, as time goes by more people will technically fall on the "rich" side of the line -- but since that number is not being adjusted for inflation, it's only in absolute terms. They may or may not be any "richer" than they were decades before in a relative sense. And in fact, calling people rich because they pass a metric for what rich was 30 years ago is dangerous. It leads to well-intentioned but ultimately damaging ideas, like increasing taxes on those people because they "can afford to pay more."
I honestly don't understand your post, so much so that I serious wonder if I am missing something. You talk about people "moaning" about the "persistence of poverty" and then claim that poverty is staying the same. Well, what, then, is persistance? And of course you bring a terribly important claim that the line between middle class and rich hasn't changed with inflation and then claim that middle class people becoming rich-except-not-really-lulz is not a huge problem that needs to be corrected. Of course it does, before these people who aren't really rich start getting treated as if they are.
It reminds me of an episode of West Wing. I'll have to paraphrase (particularly the numbers) because I can't remember the exact wording, but there was a suggestion that there be a new formula put in place to determine the poverty line and an exchange that went roughly like this:
Toby: "You mean to tell me there's 50,000 more poor people?"
Sam: "They've always been poor, Toby, we're just calling them that."
T: "Why don't we just call everybody who makes over $100,000 rich, and everybody who makes under $100,000 middle class?"
S: "Then they would all be Republicans, wouldn't they?"
These labels... they're artificial, but not meaningless. The government calling somebody poor makes them eligible for all sorts of programs, and calling them rich may very well subject them to more burdens. If that's the system we want, that's fine -- but it only works if poor people are actually poor and rich people are actually rich. If it's not the case, it is a very big problem and absolutely needs to be fixed.
Beyond that, it's worth noting that these labels are awfully huge swathes of humanity. "Rich" includes people making a penny more than the cutoff as well as a million dollars more, and "poor" is anything from a person who doesn't make a dime to one who makes one cent under the limit. For a one person household, the 2009 poverty line was $10,830. Pretending that if you make $11,000 that you're in the same city much less the same ballpark as somebody making $99,999 (still "middle class") is delusional. "The middle class is disappearing" is about more than just which segment of these largely arbitrary lines people fall in. It's about the gap between rich and poor--not the boundaries, but the people. It's about whether or not these middle class or even faux-rich people actually have more spending power than they did years ago or less. It's quite the complicated issue, to be certain.
You know, I was going to give this a troll moderation but it's so ridiculously bad, and thus full of such delicious irony with a failed troll talking about somebody else failing, that I couldn't bring myself to do it.
Carry on sir!
Actually it's worse than that. GS is ONE investor. They can sell stakes in that investment to 499 people or 4.9 million people and it doesn't change anything for Facebook.
Whether it's ultimately legal or not is questionable; that it is an attempt to circumvent the law, however, is undeniable.
Yeah, but good news. Facebook found "one" investor willing to pay $1.5B. Of course that "one" investor is going to sell stakes in its "one" investment to hundreds or thousands of other people, but still. I mean, isn't that great? Facebook still has 498 slots open before they have to comply with "US regulatory nonsense" like, you know, informing would-be investors about how their company is actually doing. Fucking bunch of communists over at the SEC, man. Always stomping on small businesses like Goldman Sachs and companies valuated at $50 billion all on some ludicrous notion that investors should be informed as to what they might be investing in.
I see what you're trying to do and I frankly agree with every example you gave... except for the guns.
What, exactly, is the non-violent purpose to guns that I am missing? Best as I can tell, their purpose is violence and murder. Sometimes it's with good intentions; shooting that burglar in the face protects your belongings and your family, but I would be hard pressed not to identify it as violent. Same thing with wars; sometimes they need to be fought, but they are violent in the extreme. Policemen shooting criminals to protect themselves? That's violence too, in the same way that if somebody hits you and you hit them back you're both engaging in violence -- even if one of you is right and one of you is wrong. And those are, frankly, the legitimate purpose of guns. We haven't even touched on the true violence and murder.
The only use I can think of for a gun that might not be violence--and I'm still torn on this--is hunting, and even then, in this day and age, hunting is more about people wanting to go outside and play with their guns than it is out of any necessity of providing for one's family. Getting meat is far simpler, safer and quite cheap from means that quite frankly treat the animals quite a bit better than hoping some idiot with a rifle hits them in an immediately-fatal instead of eventually-fatal place. And the fact that somebody might pay you to stuff that animal or make a coat out of its fur doesn't change the inherent nature of the act, just the intentions with which it is committed.
Are you simply defining anything that has good intentions as non-violent, or am I missing a use case here?
Even if they usually make good decisions, one has to allow for the possibility that that is not always the case. Google does not feel that it is, and the judge believes they have enough of a case to bring it to trial and to enjoin the Department of the Interior until that is complete.
Maybe they're wrong. Maybe it is from an abundance of caution. But really, if the process is valuable at all then people need to be made aware that they will be asked to account for it and for their decisions. Absent that, what is the point of it at all?
The game you're looking for is called Rift, and it releases on March 1st. The interface is nearly identical (obviously it looks different but if you break it down into what pieces are actually there and where, you basically have WOW: Player frame, target frame, target of target, buffs list up at the top; map in the top-right corner; chat window lower left; action bars lower middle; bags right of that; right action bars on the side, etc etc). Some people will be turned off by it, but I was very impressed that they didn't set out to reinvent the wheel and that they were willing to stick with things from other games that worked well, like the interface of WOW--one thing they definitely got right, especially as they iterated on it. It is also the single most polished beta I have ever been a part of. I only found one serious bug in my time as a beta tester (certain? mobs would randomly de-aggro, run back where they came from and reset to full health); the rest were simple display issues. Gameplay is similar. They have talent trees, though they don't cal them that and instead of having three trees for a class you have four callings (mage, warrior, cleric, rogue) and each of those has 8 possible "souls" that essentially comprise one of your trees. From what I've seen you need to put a few points into a second tree because you are not allowed to have more points in a tree than your level, and you get 2 talent points every 3 levels, but whether you go hardcore after one tree or spread your points more evenly among two or three is up to you. Quests are like WOWs, including built-in quest tracing, there's battlegrounds ("waterfronts"), regular and heroic dungeons and raiding (none of which I have personally seen yet because the beta didn't let you get to max level; I could have done one dungeon but I felt I was a little under-level for it so I didn't before that beta window closed).
There's also their unique concept of rifts, essentially tears in the fabric between other planes and ours. When a rift opens, the object of players is to get over there and close it by completing a number of objectives: It usually starts out something like "kill 4 of these and 4 of those," then moves on to a boss phase, and if you do really well you get a bonus phase. You're also judged on your performance and given rewards accordingly. They're essentially random, outdoor mini-raids where you fight alongside other people who show up. If it's a much lower-level rift than you are, you might be able to close it yourself--provided that it's not a Major rift, which means the monster coming out are elite. "Elite" in this game is code for "oh shit, get help" unless you massively outlevel it. I remember attacking an elite who I was I believe 5 levels above and he three shot me, and I was a tank type. In any event, if players fail to close a rift in a certain amount of time they gain a foothold and they begin to launch invasions, which are essentially the same as rifts except they move and they like to go out and stomp nearby cities. Turning in a quest and finding your city under attack from an unchecked invasion is not uncommon, nor is logging out in a city and logging back in to find the enemy controls it. Then not only do you have to repel the invasions along similar lines, you have to go back and destroy their foothold so it doesn't spawn more. Supposedly, toward the end-game, the loot from these rifts sit somewhere between regular and heroic ("Tier 2") dungeons and again between regular and heroic raids, if I remember correctly.
I think it's a really good choice for people who didn't quit WOW because they hated it--in fact they liked it--but who are just
I have what would be described in science as a "fucking awful" voice. I remember playing with some VR technology a few years back and I couldn't even make it through the training. I adjusted my mic and everything like it asked and then got to the prompts: "Say 'dog.'" "Dog." "You said 'b93r.' Say 'dog.'" After six or seven tries of that kind of nonsense I pretty much gave up.
I was actually playing with a copy of Dragon Naturally Speaking a month or two ago and was surprised by how good it was. I could tell it was struggling with my voice; the instructions at the start of the training said that most people wouldn't need to read the whole story for the training to be comfortable, and I had to go all the way through and more, but it was pretty good. It could recognize whole sentences at a time, whereas previous technology couldn't even manage words. I finished up the training and busted open Word to give it a try (I could have trained it further but I was just playing with it) and it was very accurate. And this, quite obviously, is with a voice that gives VR technology fits and a general vocabulary where it couldn't even attempt to muff the results by choosing from known word lists.
I have little trouble believing that with a bit more training and a little more user training on my part (working to enunciate a little better, etc) that it could be a very capable means of entering information. Doubly so if the information I'm entering is predictable such that it has (for lack of a better term) a smaller dictionary to guess from.
VR is probably pitiful compared to where we thought we would be in 2010 years ago, but it's actually getting to be quite respectable.
While that's not untrue, it's somewhat disingenuous. If people knew basic auto repair, they could save a lot of money on oil changes and auto mechanics. If people knew basic home improvement skills, they could save a lot of money on handymen and repair guys.
But most people don't, and in that void of ignorance, fear or indifference exists entire industries who we collectively tag with the sometimes laughable title of "professional." A person doing some basic math might have figured out they couldn't afford what they were buying (and you're grossly oversimplifying the problem, by the way), but instead they relied on a series of "professionals" to do it for them -- professionals who are paid handsomely, not only in terms of their own salaries but in terms of commissions (real estate) and interest (banks/mortgage companies). Both of these parties nodded their heads emphatically and declared "of COURSE you can afford this, don't worry about it! Sign here!"
They did it from simple greed, and from a misguided belief that eh, even if we have to boot these freeloaders out of their house we have some of their money in pocket and real estate prices keep going up so we won't lose THAT much when we sell it to the next sucker. Through their greed, and their staggering unprofessionalism, they essentially collapsed two entire industries with a trickle-down effect that collapsed even more; industries that survive today only through the intervention of the federal government, right or wrong.
Some extra personal accountability is certainly a good idea to protect ourselves, but when we hire or deal with professionals I don't think any sane person expects them to be so wholly unprofessional as to tank their entire industry. They don't deserve to be let off the hook for that, not to any degree, even if peoples' ignorance is what allows them to operate that way. Ignorance, and more importantly knowledge of their own ignorance, is precisely why people hire professionals in the first place (not that there is much option when we're talking about a mortgage, I admit).
That these idiots are distinct from equities traders I do not deny, though I also don't think they're quite as separate as you make them out to be.
You made a joke about the French being cowards and their women having too much hair! Hahahahahaha! That is both clever and original sir, i salute you! The only thing I can't understand is why you posted anonymously and denied yourself credit for such hilarity!
The fact that you can separate the two actions--requiring updates to access the Internet and play new media (and indeed, also to continue using applications that have not been updated themselves such as the Netflix App) and "agreeing" to the upgrade--makes me seriously question your logic. It is a tactic a half step removed from "that's a nice car, it would be a shame if anything happened to it." In fact, it may be worse. At least if I pay the nice man in the trenchcoat his protection money he leaves my car alone. Sony promises to break your PS3. The only choice they give you is whether you want to lose features you've already paid for or lose the ability to play new games or utilize any features of your old games that happen to use the Internet, such as multiplayer or, as in my case, a baseball game that provides roster updates throughout the year.
It's called coercion, and it is grounds to nullify even the most strenuously negotiated contracts much less a click-through EULA that doesn't even specify how they're fucking you, just that they might. They are going to take something from you--your ability to play new games and fully utilize your old purchases--for absolutely no technical reason other than people who probably aren't you are using their machines in a way that Sony disapproves of (homebrew, cheap computing cluster, etc), unless you "agree" to let them take out features you've already paid for. It's nothing but a bargaining chip to force you to do as they tell you to do.
Frankly even that is too generous; bargaining chip implies there is negotiation and intelligent thought before determining which is the best course of action. Turning down these updates and effectively bricking your PS3 from that point in time forward is no more a choice than not paying the man in the trenchcoat. Do you really think it's any consolation to people who got rid of their old PS2s because they have this lovely new PS3 with backward compatibility that they weren't fucked in the ass until they "agreed" to it? Oh but don't worry dear consumer, we'll slowly start to release them as downloads for $9.99 a pop! Everybody wins!
The PS3 was the most locked-down piece of consumer hardware in the history of computing. Do you truly believe this update requirement was done as anything other than a way to force you to do what they want and patch any holes that might arise--the exact behavior we have seen from them? No, it's not about an unspoken agreement to produce content; if they stopped making PS3 games tomorrow I would be upset, but I wouldn't have been fucked. They are actively breaking my hardware, for all intents and purposes, unless I let them have their way. At the bottom of every game I buy--on the disc AND the packaging--is a little "PS3" logo. The idea that one disc might work and another might not in my PS3 based on whether I've let them screw me yet is ludicrous, and so is claiming that it is somehow a choice.
It goes well beyond shady. The fact that it hasn't been absolutely clobbered in civil suits yet is stunning. The idea that any court in the world would see it as anything less than illegal coercion boggles the mind.
And not that it should matter, but lest you think my outrage is personally motivated: I did buy my machine with the expectation of using OtherOS, but after a while I realized I simply wasn't going to go through the hassle and the update didn't affect me on a personal level. Likewise, I paid $600 at PS3 launch so my PS3 has hardware backward-compatibility and I am not personally affected by their removal of the software backward-compatibility in later updates. That doesn't make either of those decisions any less of an outrage.
They're not quite the same thing, but you won't like the major distinction.
Fraud needs to have actual harm. This doesn't.
Okay. So Google can't patent word-of-mouth. Being as that is neither a website (which ALL of their examples are and which they explicitly claim), is not across multiple social networks even if it were, and doesn't meet the claims of the patent that are ACTUALLY patented and not the abstract describing in generic terms what it is about, I fail to see what value you think your post has.
If you don't know how patents work or what prior art is, that's fine. Don't post acting as if you do. The seemingly-contagious Slashdot idiocy regarding patents has gotten old and adds nothing whatsoever to any discussion of the important issues surrounding patents and IP law.
Uhm. How, exactly, is a DDOS legitimate correspondence? Particularly when we know it was a DDOS and there were tools distributed to participate in it?
Web server communication is request-response. You don't communicate with it, you simply ask it to return a resource and it returns it. You think these people were, what? All trying to mirror Mastercard and PayPal in case somebody was going to retaliate against them? And were going to helpfully "mirror" Amazon but then decided that they were too big to, uh, mirror?
Please. It might not be proof beyond a reasonable doubt, but we certainly know what their intentions were.
Why not? Protecting society is certainly one of the biggest reasons that somebody should be incarcerated, but there are certainly others: Punishment. Deterrence. Rehabilitation. There are all sorts of crimes for which people are and should be sent to prison that don't involve violence. Theft certainly ranks high among them; it's been something recognized as a serious crime pretty such as long as societies have existed. Fraud would be another. I'm sure you can think of others.
Lines are drawn in specific places. It's done on a per-society basis. We call them "laws."
In Sweden, they believe that Assange's actions violate those laws. They still need to convince a court that he actually did those actions and that the actions do violate the law; that burden is on them. But if they bring him to trial and the verdict comes back guilty, you need to step back and acknowledge peoples' right to a different opinion than yours. Especially different societies.
Second, I'm not sure where you're getting your information that people do things like this all the time or a lot of people do them or even that few people would call them rape. Claiming it does not make it true, nor does your anecdote that an ex-girlfriend did one of these things to you and you didn't call the police so clearly it can't be rape. How are most of these issues different from spousal rape, where a husband just assumes by virtue of being married that he has consent to fuck his wife whenever he wants? Hell, I would find that more defensible than fucking somebody who specifically is telling you no and yet it's still outlawed in most countries of the world. (See the spousal rape article on Wikipedia if you want a citation.)
From my personal opinion, I find almost all of the things you listed should be rape. There are any number of perfectly valid reasons that a person might withdraw consent (tell the person to stop) after sex begins. What if he is hurting her? What if she was only interested in vaginal sex and are suddenly taking it up the ass? What if he refuses to use a condom? What if he suddenly becomes an asshole she would never have consented to have sex with ("shut the fuck up bitch or I'll beat your fucking brains out!")? What if he starts handcuffing her to the bed or choking her because he likes it kinky? Can you honestly claim you believe any of those situations that a guy should be able to continue right on fucking the person and it be legally okay? Even "eh, I changed my mind" works for me. I would fucking HATE IT and probably never have anything to do with the woman again if she pulled it on me, but the idea that there is any reason or any point at which I can say I get to have my penis in somebody who doesn't want it there... well, I deserve whatever I get.
Having sex with somebody who is asleep is an even easier case. Just because somebody consents to sex that night doesn't mean they consent to even more sex in the morning, and there is no reason that anybody should be able to fuck somebody without their consent and it be okay -- especially when the person is not even conscious to know who is doing them how or why, much less agree to it. You want to have more sex? No problem. Wake her up and ask. She screwed you last night, chances are she'll screw you again in the morning. Not even asking? Holy crap. "But gosh, I didn't want to wake her up or anything!" Talk about the definition of a selfish bastard -- in all possible ways.
The only iffy one to me is continuing to have sex with a broken condom. If the woman knows it broke and says stop, see point #1 about withdrawing consent. If not, I think pr
"Tough luck, things have consequences!" the arrogant man who doesn't even have the nuts to post under an account declares.
Eh, I suppose consequences are okay as long as they only involve big countries you don't like, money and lives and not really important things like Slashdot karma.
No. None of the schedules would be patentable (for several reasons), but the methodology of your random tournament generator might be. (I would hope not, but who the hell knows!)
The problem is basically this: In NCAA football, unlike pretty much every other sport, there is a quirk. Most playoff systems function where the top N teams by record get in and then play against each other in elimination rounds, usually with team 1 playing team N, team 2 playing team N-1, etc. But not NCAA football.
Instead they have the BCS (Bowl Championship Series) system. It's basically a secret formula that assigns a score to each team, then they pair teams off to each play in a single "bowl" game. No secondary rounds. Record is part of the formula, but only part. It's more important WHO you play and the result than it is what your actual record is. For example, playing strong teams is weighted more highly than playing weak teams, beating a team you're "supposed" to beat means less than beating teams who are supposed to beat you, absolutely dominating an opponent means more than squeaking by with a win, and, though they try to hide it and obscure it, the reality is that big schools with metric crap-tons of money get higher ratings than small teams. It's controversial, because it often results in teams who have better record not making it or being rated in worse places -- which means they play in a worse bowl game, get less potential revenue, less exposure, etc etc, and because to the best of my knowledge they don't actually tell you what the formula is. Each week they simply release a new set of numbers and that's the ranking.
What would be patentable (and might be patented) is their formula; the specific way they rate the teams to determine who gets in and at what position (and thus what bowl game). So would alternate methods of determining that. You could try to patent the regular old "top N records get in" system but it would fail and also require all sorts of tie-breaker conditions. (Oh god do I hope it would fail.) Somebody is proposing an alternate system to the BCS, and a third person is claiming that he already holds a patent that would apply to it. Is it true? I don't know. Would it hold up in court? I don't know. But that's where we are.
And of course even with publicity, the more common the scheme becomes the less valuable it's going to be to any individual group.
I can say I've bought a number of games on sale from Steam over the past month or so (and particularly the past few days). Two for $20, two for $10, two for $5. Three of those were games I knew nothing about; one was recommended by a friend, and the other two were me looking at the prices, looking at the game descriptions and screenshots and going "hell, that looks like it's worth the money." In that same time period I've bought 0 games priced over that amount. But really, if somebody bludgeoned me over the head and said "welcome to the demand curve" they would be right. The cheaper shit is, the more of it I am willing to buy. This is no surprise.
How does this apply to "pay what you want" schemes? The same. You'll get a lot more sales at a lot less dollars. So will it work? Ultimately I think it depends on the project. If you're selling something that only costs a few hundred thousand dollars to make, you could do nicely for yourself. A lot of $1 and $5 showings would add up fairly quickly. If you're making a mega-budget, top-of-the-line video game with a $50,000,000 budget, you're going to have a lot of trouble recouping that cost, particularly as more and more publishers take up the scheme and the novelty and publicity wears off.
Likewise, the more successful something is beforehand the better it can do. If a successful band uses this scheme, even with only $1 a pop they could make quite a strong return. They'll have a lot of sales and only a moderate production cost to overcome. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 sold about 20 million copies last year. Assuming you could have done slightly better with a pay-as-you-go scheme, let's say 25 million sales at an average of $3 (mostly a mix of $1 and $5) -- about $75MM. Does that recoup the costs? I don't know, but it would have to be pretty close at the least. Chances are it does. Big game houses aren't going to become uber-rich on a scheme like this, but assuming there is a decent market for their game it seems as though they could at least fund development and make some profits like that, and that's a very big deal.
The bottom line is there will be more pieces taken out of a similar-sized pie. If I usually spend $150 (about 3 games) per year, I'm probably not going to spend significantly more than that with nothing but pay-what-you-want schemes; rather, I'm going to get more for it. Depending on how much I allocate to each thing I purchase, I might even run out of things I want enough to pay for them. As always, there will be people it works for and people it doesn't. Previous success will be an advantage, small production costs will be an advantage. Is it the future? For small publishers, probably so, especially for their first titles. For big firms of whatever medium, probably not. They want the profits, both selfishly and to absorb risks and failures in other areas.
Of couse we can, and there are all sorts of ways of going about it, directly or indirectly, if that's what we choose to do: Simply regulating it the way we want it, almost sure to pass constitutional muster; attack them with anti-trust regulations, since backbone providers are clear (natural) monopolies; torpedo their other interests unless they agree to do what we want (you want to acquire such-and-such company or get access to new spectrum for your cell technology? -- nope!); targeted taxes or fees that will be waived for compliance with certain rules (if you didn't read the word "mammoth" into this sentence, try again); revoke or tax their use of the public right of way for non-compliance. And that's about fifteen seconds off the top of my head.
That it might not sit right with you from your personal set of morals and your particular view of the right of the government is irrelevant to what we can do. If you think otherwise, to borrow your phrase, you fail. (A phrase, by the way, that you can take right back to World of Warcraft where self-righteous idiocy like that belongs.)
Convenience is certainly a big factor in Internet play's favor but it has little to do with growing up. It is shifting technology that enables that convenience and increases its value, combined with, well, money. The Internet in 1997 is not nearly as ubiquitous as it is today; Internet play is now the expectation. Playing in the same room with friends is great if you happen to have friends in the same room, but if you don't it's nice to be able to hop online and play with them or even with strangers. That's true for children with swathes of free time as well as adults. If multiplayer is a valuable feature--and we can see pretty much all the most popular games have a multiplayer component--then it is that much more valuable if I can use that feature any time I want rather than when my friends happen to be around.
So now the publishers are faced with two options: Including multiplayer but not Internet play is not a real option, so they can either support Internet play AND LAN-style play or just one or the other. The former takes less development and QA time and will still appeal to the vast majority of its fanbase that it would have otherwise; the latter takes more time and money and might bring in a handful of people who have no interest in the single-player or Internet play but want the LAN abilities. It's not a hard stretch to see why they choose the former more than the latter.
Of course, there's another reason too. Not only does Internet play increase sales in general, it reduces piracy. Pirating the single player version of a game is easy, and lots of people do it, but most of those games have no multiplayer abilities when pirated. Pirating a game with LAN play still allows LAN play, reducing any incentive for a legitimate copy to those who are inclined to pirate it otherwise. Connecting to the Internet is either impossible with pirated copies or dangerous. Do you really want your pirated copy of Black Ops dialing up the game company's servers? For many, a single player copy of the game for $0 is plenty and that will be that, but for some, that $30-60 to enable Internet play will be worth it.
More control, less expenditures, more profits... does the article author really have trouble understanding where split-screen has gone?