I think what he didn't like was the fact that they used his game to promote their website, in a way (judging from the screenshots) that made it seem like they created the game - without mentioning that they didn't, and without linking back to his actual site, and of course, hot-linking the game, too.
Was his response immature? Probably. But still, I can't say I can't understand it; if you create something and put it on your website, then you don't want a company effectively claim it as theirs, and you don't want them stealing your bandwidth, either, and this company did both.
Interestingly enough, BTW, the company's main website seems to redirect to Google now. Hmm.
*nods* On the other hand, I just visited http://www.f-prot.com/ and http://www.f-secure.com/ and they mention that the companies were founded in 1993 and 1988, respectively - so that would suggest that they're not the same.
But then, the F-Secure website *does* mention F-Prot, talking about "F-Secure Anti-Virus for DOS (F-Prot)". Could it be that they were different companies initially that merged at a later point? I seem to recall that F-Secure was formerly Datafellows, too...
On a side note... are they actually Finnish? I was always under the impression that they're an Icelandic company (http://www.frisk.is/ is still up and still seems to talk about F-Prot, but I don't speak Icelandic...)
Or am I wrong? I'm genuinely confused now; I'm not even sure anymore whether F-Prot and F-Secure have much to do with each other, although the "F-" would certainly seem to suggest so.
Any enlightening replies will be greatly appreciated.:)
"None of them have been truly autonomous like worms on PCs," [Whitehouse] said. "They always require a certain degree of user interaction."
So it seems like you can't catch them by simply being near others with infected phones when you have Bluetooth enabled; you still have to do something. But it's not clear to me what amount of user interaction is required - i.e., whether it's enough to accidentally select the default "yes" answer in a dialog or something similar, or whether you have to go to lengths to catch it.
I don't have a mobile phone at all, so I don't know that much about these things.:) Maybe check F-Secure's website for more information.
Not all phones have Bluetooth and other such gimmicks. If you want to find some which don't, just look at what models you can get for a relatively cheap price even if you don't enter a contract - those that still only cost 50 bucks are the ones that don't have all the bells and whistles.
Whether you bought just the physical media or not depends on where you're from. In the USA, yes, it seems that you're screwed - the EULA can dictate any terms whatsoever, and you don't have the right to use the product if you don't agree to it, even if you paid a thousand bucks for it.
In other countries, it's different, though. If I myself go out and buy a piece of software, then I have bought the right to use it, too; and although there is no court decision on it yet, I think that the EULA is not binding for me, either. I have a contract with the store who sold me the product, not with the software manufacturer, and if I have to click a button in order to exercise my rights to use the software (which I *already* have), then I can click that button without entering a legal agreement (on a side note, I doubt that the way most EULAs are presented would stand up in court here, anyway).
Of course, that doesn't mean I can give out copies of the product to my friends, for example; but for that, no EULA is needed, anyway, since this is not a right given to me under copyright law, anyway. What I *do* have, though, is the right to use the software I bought, and the manufacturer can't stop me, just like a book publisher cannot stop me from using a book as a doorstop, or from enhancing my reading experience with the use of a bookmark.
It's not about Blizzard making their own software open source or not - that is, of course, their own decision, and it shouldn't be anyone else's.
But I don't see why a third party cannot implement an independent product that, in terms of the actual code used, is entirely unrelated to any of Blizzard's products. Sure, the DMCA outlaws circumvention of copy prevention mechanisms, but nothing is actually being copied here; and even if it was, there are exemptions if you only do it for the purpose of interoperability.
If implementing the functionality needed to host these games on your own server does not qualify for "interoperability", then what does?
Would you be on Microsoft's side if they came down on OpenOffice.org, claiming that OOo's ability to read Word documents was illegal under the DMCA? If not, I'd like to hear what exactly the differences would be in your opinion.
Yeah... and those pesky rebels back in the late 18th century should just have realised that the English king was their rightful Master, too, to whom they owed loyalty.
All that talk of a new nation, with liberty and justice for all and all that... that's all nice and good, but you can't go and break the laws, even if the laws are unjust. And heaven forbid you try to defend yourself in court if you're sued, too.
But if you're not buying CDs, doesn't that mean that you're giving them the ability to say "oh, look, we're losing sales, it must be all the piracy, we need tougher laws"?
Not buying CDs is a good thing, of course, but you also need to be very open about your reasons. Write to the RIAA, write in your blog, write an opinion piece for your local newspaper - because otherwise, the RIAA will just misrepresent your actions in the worst way possible and use them to justify asking for even more power.
There's another point that the submitter is missing: the RIAA is not actually interested in you buying music online in legitimate ways.
What the RIAA wants you to do is buy a CD with ten songs on it for 20 or 30 bucks - not buy the two songs on that CD that you actually like for 99 cents each from iTunes.
This is how they used to make those vast amounts of money - sell you what you want, but bundle it with lots of other stuff you don't want but that inflates the price several times. iTunes etc. ultimately give users a finer-grained control over what they do and don't purchase, which means that the RIAA will make less money. They know they can't really shut down services like iTunes altogether, as the oft-heard claim that people would download music in legal ways if only there *was* a legal way does indeed have some truth in it, but what they really want is to go back to a distribution model where you're forced to spend money on things you don't want in order to get the things you do want.
How about those that actually do the copyright infringement? Suprnova (without an e) only provided the tracker; they never had any material copyrighted to third parties on their server, and neither did such material ever pass through their pipes.
That's why ThePirateBay still operates, for example - it's not that Sweden doesn't have laws against copyright infringement, it's just that it doesn't have laws targetting those who don't *actually* do the infringement.
Hmm. According to that database, my current IP has two traits: one, it has never been used to send spam etc. (as far as they know); and two, it is "suspicious".
Makes you wonder. If nothing ever came from this IP, then shouldn't it be "unsuspicious" or something like that (or at least "unknown")?
That being said, I wouldn't really trust a company, whose prime motivation is to make money, with things like this anyway. There's already DShield, which is a community effort, so what do we need this for?
I think the problem that most scientists have with criticism like that is that there don't seem to be any viable alternatives. It's not that scientists don't recognise that there's a problem; it's just that it's not clear how to react to it, and that the whole process of papers being written, peer-reviewed, and published or rejected, is so fundamental that nobody wants to experiment with it unless they're sure that the whole system will improve (instead of collapsing). Peer-reviewed publishing is the single most mission-critical system in science as a whole.
Of course, if you can describe a better system (one that would actually work, too, and which will scale for the future), then I'm sure everyone would love to hear it.
This is why I'm glad that I'm a mathematician, personally. Sure, there are unsolved problems in mathematics (quite a lot of them, actually), but generally, everything that's conjectured in a paper is also proven.
Of course, this doesn't mean we know it's the truth; but it does mean that we know that it follows from certain axioms that are so simple and obvious that we accept them as true, using sound logic that, too, is ultimately so simple and obvious that we accept it as being correct.
So, not taking into accounts mistakes made by the authors of the papers that aren't caught by any of the subsequent reviewers, mathematics at least should be pretty much "correct".
I second that. What you believe is one thing, but if you abandon scepticism and value religious doctrine higher than tested scientific theory, then you've got a problem.
Incidentally, I'm sad to see that Zdziarski tries to pull the same old stunt again that most supporters of creationism try to pull - namely, deliberately misunderstanding the meaning of "theory" in the context of science and equating it with an unproven hypothesis. Everyone who knows a bit about science (which no doubt includes Zdziarski) will know that that's not true, of course, but the general public often doesn't, which is why this kind of tactic is so despicable.
I'd really like to see a supporter of creationism who says "I don't believe in evolution, but I still acknowledge that it explains the observed facts and has made falsifiable predictions that were, in turn, shown to be correct". But I guess that's something you just won't hear from someone who puts his personal faith above the scientific method, as far as the search for scientific truth is concerned.
Actually, IIRC, the domain name "example.com" is similarly reserved, and should be used instead of things like "acme.com" (which is registered to a real person).
Still, even many RFCs get it wrong and use acme.com for examples.
It would be nicer if they actually *were* text ads, though. I sometimes use Opera as an alternative to Mozilla, and so far, all the ads I've seen have been graphical.
Of course, that's a thing of the past now that I got a free registration code from them.:)
Slashdot Mirror
A mobile VoIP adapter? Humbug, that's nothing compared to my mobile IPoV adapter!
But will we have those "lasers" on the "moon", too?
I think what he didn't like was the fact that they used his game to promote their website, in a way (judging from the screenshots) that made it seem like they created the game - without mentioning that they didn't, and without linking back to his actual site, and of course, hot-linking the game, too.
Was his response immature? Probably. But still, I can't say I can't understand it; if you create something and put it on your website, then you don't want a company effectively claim it as theirs, and you don't want them stealing your bandwidth, either, and this company did both.
Interestingly enough, BTW, the company's main website seems to redirect to Google now. Hmm.
*nods* On the other hand, I just visited http://www.f-prot.com/ and http://www.f-secure.com/ and they mention that the companies were founded in 1993 and 1988, respectively - so that would suggest that they're not the same. But then, the F-Secure website *does* mention F-Prot, talking about "F-Secure Anti-Virus for DOS (F-Prot)". Could it be that they were different companies initially that merged at a later point? I seem to recall that F-Secure was formerly Datafellows, too...
On a side note... are they actually Finnish? I was always under the impression that they're an Icelandic company (http://www.frisk.is/ is still up and still seems to talk about F-Prot, but I don't speak Icelandic...)
:)
Or am I wrong? I'm genuinely confused now; I'm not even sure anymore whether F-Prot and F-Secure have much to do with each other, although the "F-" would certainly seem to suggest so.
Any enlightening replies will be greatly appreciated.
TFA says:
So it seems like you can't catch them by simply being near others with infected phones when you have Bluetooth enabled; you still have to do something. But it's not clear to me what amount of user interaction is required - i.e., whether it's enough to accidentally select the default "yes" answer in a dialog or something similar, or whether you have to go to lengths to catch it.
I don't have a mobile phone at all, so I don't know that much about these things. :) Maybe check F-Secure's website for more information.
Not all phones have Bluetooth and other such gimmicks. If you want to find some which don't, just look at what models you can get for a relatively cheap price even if you don't enter a contract - those that still only cost 50 bucks are the ones that don't have all the bells and whistles.
Whether you bought just the physical media or not depends on where you're from. In the USA, yes, it seems that you're screwed - the EULA can dictate any terms whatsoever, and you don't have the right to use the product if you don't agree to it, even if you paid a thousand bucks for it.
In other countries, it's different, though. If I myself go out and buy a piece of software, then I have bought the right to use it, too; and although there is no court decision on it yet, I think that the EULA is not binding for me, either. I have a contract with the store who sold me the product, not with the software manufacturer, and if I have to click a button in order to exercise my rights to use the software (which I *already* have), then I can click that button without entering a legal agreement (on a side note, I doubt that the way most EULAs are presented would stand up in court here, anyway).
Of course, that doesn't mean I can give out copies of the product to my friends, for example; but for that, no EULA is needed, anyway, since this is not a right given to me under copyright law, anyway. What I *do* have, though, is the right to use the software I bought, and the manufacturer can't stop me, just like a book publisher cannot stop me from using a book as a doorstop, or from enhancing my reading experience with the use of a bookmark.
It's not about Blizzard making their own software open source or not - that is, of course, their own decision, and it shouldn't be anyone else's.
But I don't see why a third party cannot implement an independent product that, in terms of the actual code used, is entirely unrelated to any of Blizzard's products. Sure, the DMCA outlaws circumvention of copy prevention mechanisms, but nothing is actually being copied here; and even if it was, there are exemptions if you only do it for the purpose of interoperability.
If implementing the functionality needed to host these games on your own server does not qualify for "interoperability", then what does?
Would you be on Microsoft's side if they came down on OpenOffice.org, claiming that OOo's ability to read Word documents was illegal under the DMCA? If not, I'd like to hear what exactly the differences would be in your opinion.
Yeah... and those pesky rebels back in the late 18th century should just have realised that the English king was their rightful Master, too, to whom they owed loyalty.
All that talk of a new nation, with liberty and justice for all and all that... that's all nice and good, but you can't go and break the laws, even if the laws are unjust. And heaven forbid you try to defend yourself in court if you're sued, too.
But if you're not buying CDs, doesn't that mean that you're giving them the ability to say "oh, look, we're losing sales, it must be all the piracy, we need tougher laws"?
Not buying CDs is a good thing, of course, but you also need to be very open about your reasons. Write to the RIAA, write in your blog, write an opinion piece for your local newspaper - because otherwise, the RIAA will just misrepresent your actions in the worst way possible and use them to justify asking for even more power.
Let's see who we have:
Who are you going to believe?
There's another point that the submitter is missing: the RIAA is not actually interested in you buying music online in legitimate ways.
What the RIAA wants you to do is buy a CD with ten songs on it for 20 or 30 bucks - not buy the two songs on that CD that you actually like for 99 cents each from iTunes.
This is how they used to make those vast amounts of money - sell you what you want, but bundle it with lots of other stuff you don't want but that inflates the price several times. iTunes etc. ultimately give users a finer-grained control over what they do and don't purchase, which means that the RIAA will make less money. They know they can't really shut down services like iTunes altogether, as the oft-heard claim that people would download music in legal ways if only there *was* a legal way does indeed have some truth in it, but what they really want is to go back to a distribution model where you're forced to spend money on things you don't want in order to get the things you do want.
There's also a discussion about this on the linux-kernel mailing list (lkml) currently - certainly worth reading:
= 1&w=2
http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?t=112541793700006&r
How about those that actually do the copyright infringement? Suprnova (without an e) only provided the tracker; they never had any material copyrighted to third parties on their server, and neither did such material ever pass through their pipes. That's why ThePirateBay still operates, for example - it's not that Sweden doesn't have laws against copyright infringement, it's just that it doesn't have laws targetting those who don't *actually* do the infringement.
Hmm. According to that database, my current IP has two traits: one, it has never been used to send spam etc. (as far as they know); and two, it is "suspicious".
Makes you wonder. If nothing ever came from this IP, then shouldn't it be "unsuspicious" or something like that (or at least "unknown")?
That being said, I wouldn't really trust a company, whose prime motivation is to make money, with things like this anyway. There's already DShield, which is a community effort, so what do we need this for?
I think the problem that most scientists have with criticism like that is that there don't seem to be any viable alternatives. It's not that scientists don't recognise that there's a problem; it's just that it's not clear how to react to it, and that the whole process of papers being written, peer-reviewed, and published or rejected, is so fundamental that nobody wants to experiment with it unless they're sure that the whole system will improve (instead of collapsing). Peer-reviewed publishing is the single most mission-critical system in science as a whole.
Of course, if you can describe a better system (one that would actually work, too, and which will scale for the future), then I'm sure everyone would love to hear it.
This is why I'm glad that I'm a mathematician, personally. Sure, there are unsolved problems in mathematics (quite a lot of them, actually), but generally, everything that's conjectured in a paper is also proven.
Of course, this doesn't mean we know it's the truth; but it does mean that we know that it follows from certain axioms that are so simple and obvious that we accept them as true, using sound logic that, too, is ultimately so simple and obvious that we accept it as being correct.
So, not taking into accounts mistakes made by the authors of the papers that aren't caught by any of the subsequent reviewers, mathematics at least should be pretty much "correct".
I second that. What you believe is one thing, but if you abandon scepticism and value religious doctrine higher than tested scientific theory, then you've got a problem.
Incidentally, I'm sad to see that Zdziarski tries to pull the same old stunt again that most supporters of creationism try to pull - namely, deliberately misunderstanding the meaning of "theory" in the context of science and equating it with an unproven hypothesis. Everyone who knows a bit about science (which no doubt includes Zdziarski) will know that that's not true, of course, but the general public often doesn't, which is why this kind of tactic is so despicable.
I'd really like to see a supporter of creationism who says "I don't believe in evolution, but I still acknowledge that it explains the observed facts and has made falsifiable predictions that were, in turn, shown to be correct". But I guess that's something you just won't hear from someone who puts his personal faith above the scientific method, as far as the search for scientific truth is concerned.
Actually, IIRC, the domain name "example.com" is similarly reserved, and should be used instead of things like "acme.com" (which is registered to a real person). Still, even many RFCs get it wrong and use acme.com for examples.
It would be nicer if they actually *were* text ads, though. I sometimes use Opera as an alternative to Mozilla, and so far, all the ads I've seen have been graphical.
:)
Of course, that's a thing of the past now that I got a free registration code from them.
The *AA have equivalents all over the world, though.
On Slashdot, yes... but I'm not sure the people who'll filter these names out of the list (which I'm pretty sure they will do) will get it. :)
Yes, one. Shouldn't you be using "giga" as the loop variable instead of "i"?
You wrongly assume that every person on the Earth lives in the USA. That's not true, though - about 96% of us don't.