A lot of it is the citizens who support -- or, rather, don't oppose -- legislation and judge elections which let this crap go through.
If sane legislators wouldn't pass a law against all the minor injustices and sane judges would throw out lame cases and fine the plaintiff for wasting the court's time and the people's money, this wouldn't be an issue.
But of course this would all take effort on the part of the population, so blaming the lawyers* and CEOs** is all that is usually done.
*Lawyers are just mouthpieces to me; if a law is in place to give someone power to do something, I can't see blaming the (scumbag) lawyer who exploits it.
**CEOs/companies are not without blame, they ARE the reason these things happen. But given human nature, bad folks will never go away, which is why we can't just hope for World Peace in our lifetimes.
With respect to this article, I really Don't know if I agree. I find it Unlikely that Diebold could be anything other than an Honest company with only the best intentions in mind. Don't you?
"They're just asking for trouble (as the article points out) if they sue someone in a Fortune 1000 company."
I don't know if you can really get much worse than IBM. IBM's been around the block, they've been the bad dog, have more US patents than most nations have in their patent registry, and probably have more elite, fire-breathing IP layers than SCO has employees.
And SCO is suing for three billion.
Of course, more straw on the camel's back won't do them any good, but I fail to see how they could have picked a harder target than what they already have.
Apparently it's just a forum server that's hosed. When you direct the Slashdot firehose at a single server hosting very dynamic content, this is what you get.
Or how about instead of voting for bad candidates to see your will done, file complaints left and right with store managers and drive the chain crazy with complaints until they stop?
"That's it: questioning the validity of a statement that seemed to have a logical inconsistency. No 'pushing' for legislation."
I am sorry, I put words into your mouth. You didn't say that.
"However, I think that there is a greater burden on the party with the information. Information symmetry is critical to the operation of a free market and at the heart of many of the Wall Street criminal investigations of the past few years."
I completely agree.
In the end, the devil is in the details, or examples in this case. In the example you gave of a restaurant, no, it is implausible to expect someone to do research on every place he or she eats. You cannot fight every battle.
I am in favor of regulatory action for, say, food poisoning after-the-fact in civil courts, which to my understanding is their purpose. When someone's life, well-being or property is involved in a non-trivial manner, I think the issue should have prior legislation in place and go to a criminal court.
In the case of employee/employer, however, I feel that the vast majority of workers know their job well enough to know the risks or to know to ask and I think this is what I was concerned with in my reply. I can see room for legislation for employers, but I think perhaps IBM is a bad example.
A good example might be a warehouse for misc. goods. Someone operating a fork-lift perhaps won't know the contents of a few drums on a palette and it is reasonable to require that they be marked.
The thing that bothers me is that people want prior legislation to stop all the "meanies" in the world when they should be turning to civil courts and to person-to-person relations for resolving differences. Government is a sledgehammer, not a cane and I'm afraid for a society which leans on it so much for guidance and regulation. The idea of dealing with problems on your own is so foreign to some people it really is astounding. The paradigm is so different...
I think you are right and we are on the same page, throwing generalities at details. Please forgive the inflammatory post and thanks for a civil, well thought out reply.
"What is the solution? Consult an attorney to apply for a credit card, consult a freshness expert when shopping, and hire a fireman to go to the fireworks stand with us?"
Your solution to legal contract jumble is to add more legal jumble in the form of government?
You would just roll over and keep buying at a grocery store if they sold you rotten meat?
You don't know that fireworks are dangerous and should be handled with care?
As we say in the software world, a hack upon a hack does not a solution make.
Companies will cater to customers when the customer demands something -- ease of use with software, for instance. Companies will also take a mile when they know they can get away with an inch.
Sign a contract without reading it? Your own fault, don't come expect someone else to fix your choice. You can't fight every battle, but when you play into 'being forced' to sign a contract, you become part of the problem.
The problem isn't me in my 'ignorance of your troubles.' Don't blame me for turning a blind eye. You CAN blame me for not wanting to waste my time looking after you when you don't look after yourself.
It's your life. Act like it. Stop playing the victim.
And to your misdirected comment about bad lawsuits, I'm on your side. The entire reason the legal system is a mess is because of people who turn to the government and the courts every time they stub their toe or someone was mean or someone looked at them the wrong way.
So instead of having workers protect themselves, we should all sign contracts (read: bargain agreements) without negotiation and instead force legislation through a blunt, self-interested, self-perpetuating government to protect us from our own agreements?
Look, I'm all in favor of legislation to help things out, some things are just a lot easier that way. But I'm sick of looking around me and seeing people who proxy of their own protection to the government.
The government, your employer, your grocery store, your fireworks stand, all of these people have books upon books of laws which force them to look out for you while you autopilot through another day, signing contracts and buying everything in sight.
It's no wonder people are so dumb, trusting and apathetic.
If I hire you to do X, I expect that you know something about it and if not to at least have the intelligence to ask.
While it may seem like a good idea, all these warning label laws are ridiculous. If you can claim reasonable ignorance of the danger, that's one thing, I'm 100% in agreement with you. But considering that very few workers know too little about their job to even ask about the dangers (What's that glowing goo?), pushing the liability on the company is silly.
Quit pushing legislation to force everyone to protect you. You can't just walk through life, buying into any offer that comes your way, taking jobs without opening your eyes, etc. If you can't look out for yourself, why should someone else?
It all boils down to reasonable ignorance and that's a hard case to prove for someone other than a drone.
No, but I think it's more or less the fact that the inventors of Ethernet, IP, etc. made their work public without fighting for payment.
In this world, you have to walk to the bank to cash your check. Nobody is going to say, "Hey, thanks for creating this wonderful technology that allowed me to do business, here's $1000!"
It would be nice to see these folks get some money, but reality isn't fruit and flowers and if you want something you have to take an active interest in it.
I'm not trying to put words in your mouth, but those who expect the world to be a happy place that gives to those who deserve (or even need, but don't deserve) are nice but very naive people who need a lesson in being realistic and basic human nature.
Seems pretty clear to me. They can't say "$699 a license" and call it a "distribution fee" which the GPL allows. They are in violation, no doubt.
I am curious, however, how the license could be revoked if they weren't in violation. My understanding is that programs like NMap are "released to the public" under the GPL. I know that you can distribute under multiple licenses, e.g. GPL to everyone, and another license for corporations who pay, but can you actually rescind a license once it's been granted without a "This license may be revoked for any reason" a la Microsoft?
True, but Sun doesn't have the marketshare to even begin pushing features down people's throats. I can't say I like Sun's elitism and two-faced attitude towards Open Source and Linux, but I wouldn't call them a Microsoft.
What you need is a good analogy. This "amazing, magic beige box" is foolproof to some people, especially when they have personal -- albeit uninformed -- opinions in the mix.
Something like a locksmith. Would someone claim that a locksmith can't get into a lock unless he's cracked it before or has seen blueprints of the lock? Rubbish.
I can't think of any others off the top of my head, but that's the type of example you need. Computer programs, like locks, follow patterns and have standard ways of doing things (e.g. reading a string into a buffer). Once you understand the ways of the craft, you can break into any non-perfect system in enough time.
All this reminds me of an older article... I haven't seen a Score 4+ comment yet, so forgive me if someone else has posted it:
From Slashdot: "'We didn't fully understand the consequences of releasing software under the GPL (General Public License),' said Dick Schafer, deputy director of the NSA. 'We received a lot of loud complaints regarding our efforts with SE Linux.'"
Later in the linked article: While stressing that the agency received a loud chorus of support as well, the chagrined Schafer said that the issue was contentious enough that "we won't be doing anything like that again."
From what I understand, the components that were distant from the CPU hence requiring a frontside bus are now inside the chip now with the AMD Athlon 64 line, hence there is no frontside bus. The speed is the equiv. of about 1600 MHz.
I'm sure I would remember more details if I wasn't so sleepy -- anyone more familiar want to expound here?
"they're adopting a technology developed by a company a fraction of their size with a fraction of the resources. It gives AMD much more credibility."
How much credibility is AMD really lacking when buck for buck they've almost always been a better deal for the speed than Intel? How much are they really lacking when they beat Intel to the 1 GHz mark and for a long while thereafter had the fastest x86 desktop chip on the market? Or when they beat Intel to wide market penetration with 64 bit chips? Or when they beat Intel to 64-bit on the desktop? Or when benchmarks showed that the Athlon FX-51 beat both Intel's flagship and PPC chips?
If AMD doesn't have credibility now, this 'specification war' won't give it to them if you ask me.
The problem is that Origin as a whole was a pawn for a number of years. Wing Commander, one of the great original series of games (along with Warcraft, Command & Conquer, Doom/Quake), was last active in 1998 with the release of Wing Commander: Secret Ops. UO was good, so I hear, but got pushed in the direction of an EQ clone. Good folks were cut off and the Make Money Fast scheme was pushed down from EA.
Origin became nothing more than a commodity as opposed to an original developer.
I think I've seen more 'indie' games in the last few years then ever before. At least 'indie' to me, a lot of publishers these days I haven't heard of before.
To give an example that might interest folks in this thread (Wing Commander fans), I just bought a game I could call 'innovative' called "X2-The Threat", created by Egosoft and published by Enlight (or maybe I have that backwards). I've never heard of either.
Anyway, in concept take Privateer, give it Freelancer style graphics and allow players to own multiple ships. It's your normal "buy a fighter, travel to X, do missions, etc." game, except that it goes a little further: you can buy fighters, cargo haulers, corvettes, destroyers, carriers, you name it. You can build your own fleet... the computer will fly anything you're not.
Apparently you can actually pilot a carrier which can carry ships inside (haven't gotten that far myself). You can even go a step further and build your own factories (space stations) -- no limit on number.
I've been waiting for a game like this since I picked up Privateer and haven't seen one until now, hence I think of it as 'innovative'. Overall the game isn't as polished as possible and might underwhelm some folks, but the freedom, reality (dock your own ship) and power you have are awesome.
If anyone else is aware of innovation along these lines, I'd like to hear it, this is the first game of it's kind that I've seen.
As a number of posts above have covered, a community still exists around a game that's been dead for roughly 6 years (WC: SO was released in '98).
I'm willing to bet that I'm not the only guy who wants Privateer on Linux or a modern OS, or even a multiplayer version.
What are your thoughts on releasing the source to the community for really old timers like Privateer, Armada, etc.? I think there's a lot of potential for a community project.
"To the Origin Guys: Look to the community, we are with you, many would help you start anew to become what you once were. Weh ave confident in you guys."
No doubt! There is still an entire community based around a game which hasn't been active in 6 years! Think of the last game you played from 1998, the year Wing Commander: Secret Ops was published as a free download. 6 years and mods and fan projects are still going.
I wish at least we could get them to OSS some of their older games for a little modification fun. I really think a community project to port some of the older games to newer platforms would really get somewhere -- there are enough 'old school' gamers like myself who would love to play Privateer on Linux. Or multiplayer!
Anyone know anything about getting game companies to GPL old games? I live in Austin and if possible would love to see something happen here.
I do wonder if they could ever be persuaded to release the source for Privateer. That and maybe Armada. I've wanted to play these games on a modern PC for ages... imagine what could happen if someone like Icculus got his hands on it. Multiplayer privateer anyone?
OT: If anyone knows how to get this stuff running in Linux, or reliably in Windows, this is the place to post it... this info (especially for Linux) has proven difficult for me to find.
"I would think the companies using these "Support Centers" will suffer for their callous disregard for their customers."
Most computer users that I know think computer mayhem is just normal. Most folks just want it to work and don't want to put in any more effort than the minimum to continue on with life.
Taking it a little further, most folks just want things to work in general. The less hassle, the better, and companies know this. At the end of the day, people take the path of least resistance.
I generally think people are too used to being screwed over to hold the company accountable or they're just too apathetic. That's why these draconian contracts and bad service are the norm. Until people stop giving these companies their money, this is the problem we'll have.
Slashdot Mirror
For a long time Interplay's trademark/slogan has been
By Gamers, For Gamers.
Similar and confusing lawsuit anyone?
A lot of it is the citizens who support -- or, rather, don't oppose -- legislation and judge elections which let this crap go through.
If sane legislators wouldn't pass a law against all the minor injustices and sane judges would throw out lame cases and fine the plaintiff for wasting the court's time and the people's money, this wouldn't be an issue.
But of course this would all take effort on the part of the population, so blaming the lawyers* and CEOs** is all that is usually done.
*Lawyers are just mouthpieces to me; if a law is in place to give someone power to do something, I can't see blaming the (scumbag) lawyer who exploits it.
**CEOs/companies are not without blame, they ARE the reason these things happen. But given human nature, bad folks will never go away, which is why we can't just hope for World Peace in our lifetimes.
Cheers
Galeon on Linux -- same here, Aqua11, no mention of google on the front page.
It's really hard to believe anything with MSN is "coincidence" when you get different results depending on OS!
Cheers
With respect to this article, I really
Don't know if I agree. I find it
Unlikely that Diebold could be anything other than an
Honest company with only the best intentions in mind. Don't you?
hehe.
"They're just asking for trouble (as the article points out) if they sue someone in a Fortune 1000 company."
I don't know if you can really get much worse than IBM. IBM's been around the block, they've been the bad dog, have more US patents than most nations have in their patent registry, and probably have more elite, fire-breathing IP layers than SCO has employees.
And SCO is suing for three billion.
Of course, more straw on the camel's back won't do them any good, but I fail to see how they could have picked a harder target than what they already have.
Cheers
Dear Mr. McBride,
This is March, not April. Please refrain from wasting all of our good material until that time.
Thank you,
-Slashdot
Apparently it's just a forum server that's hosed. When you direct the Slashdot firehose at a single server hosting very dynamic content, this is what you get.
Try this, it works fine.
Or how about instead of voting for bad candidates to see your will done, file complaints left and right with store managers and drive the chain crazy with complaints until they stop?
Ah, silly me, that'd take effort.
Cheers
"That's it: questioning the validity of a statement that seemed to have a logical inconsistency. No 'pushing' for legislation."
I am sorry, I put words into your mouth. You didn't say that.
"However, I think that there is a greater burden on the party with the information. Information symmetry is critical to the operation of a free market and at the heart of many of the Wall Street criminal investigations of the past few years."
I completely agree.
In the end, the devil is in the details, or examples in this case. In the example you gave of a restaurant, no, it is implausible to expect someone to do research on every place he or she eats. You cannot fight every battle.
I am in favor of regulatory action for, say, food poisoning after-the-fact in civil courts, which to my understanding is their purpose. When someone's life, well-being or property is involved in a non-trivial manner, I think the issue should have prior legislation in place and go to a criminal court.
In the case of employee/employer, however, I feel that the vast majority of workers know their job well enough to know the risks or to know to ask and I think this is what I was concerned with in my reply. I can see room for legislation for employers, but I think perhaps IBM is a bad example.
A good example might be a warehouse for misc. goods. Someone operating a fork-lift perhaps won't know the contents of a few drums on a palette and it is reasonable to require that they be marked.
The thing that bothers me is that people want prior legislation to stop all the "meanies" in the world when they should be turning to civil courts and to person-to-person relations for resolving differences. Government is a sledgehammer, not a cane and I'm afraid for a society which leans on it so much for guidance and regulation. The idea of dealing with problems on your own is so foreign to some people it really is astounding. The paradigm is so different...
I think you are right and we are on the same page, throwing generalities at details. Please forgive the inflammatory post and thanks for a civil, well thought out reply.
Cheers
"What is the solution? Consult an attorney to apply for a credit card, consult a freshness expert when shopping, and hire a fireman to go to the fireworks stand with us?"
Your solution to legal contract jumble is to add more legal jumble in the form of government?
You would just roll over and keep buying at a grocery store if they sold you rotten meat?
You don't know that fireworks are dangerous and should be handled with care?
As we say in the software world, a hack upon a hack does not a solution make.
Companies will cater to customers when the customer demands something -- ease of use with software, for instance. Companies will also take a mile when they know they can get away with an inch.
Sign a contract without reading it? Your own fault, don't come expect someone else to fix your choice. You can't fight every battle, but when you play into 'being forced' to sign a contract, you become part of the problem.
The problem isn't me in my 'ignorance of your troubles.' Don't blame me for turning a blind eye. You CAN blame me for not wanting to waste my time looking after you when you don't look after yourself.
It's your life. Act like it. Stop playing the victim.
And to your misdirected comment about bad lawsuits, I'm on your side. The entire reason the legal system is a mess is because of people who turn to the government and the courts every time they stub their toe or someone was mean or someone looked at them the wrong way.
Cheers
So instead of having workers protect themselves, we should all sign contracts (read: bargain agreements) without negotiation and instead force legislation through a blunt, self-interested, self-perpetuating government to protect us from our own agreements?
Look, I'm all in favor of legislation to help things out, some things are just a lot easier that way. But I'm sick of looking around me and seeing people who proxy of their own protection to the government.
The government, your employer, your grocery store, your fireworks stand, all of these people have books upon books of laws which force them to look out for you while you autopilot through another day, signing contracts and buying everything in sight.
It's no wonder people are so dumb, trusting and apathetic.
Cheers
How is this insightful?
If I hire you to do X, I expect that you know something about it and if not to at least have the intelligence to ask.
While it may seem like a good idea, all these warning label laws are ridiculous. If you can claim reasonable ignorance of the danger, that's one thing, I'm 100% in agreement with you. But considering that very few workers know too little about their job to even ask about the dangers (What's that glowing goo?), pushing the liability on the company is silly.
Quit pushing legislation to force everyone to protect you. You can't just walk through life, buying into any offer that comes your way, taking jobs without opening your eyes, etc. If you can't look out for yourself, why should someone else?
It all boils down to reasonable ignorance and that's a hard case to prove for someone other than a drone.
Cheers
No, but I think it's more or less the fact that the inventors of Ethernet, IP, etc. made their work public without fighting for payment.
In this world, you have to walk to the bank to cash your check. Nobody is going to say, "Hey, thanks for creating this wonderful technology that allowed me to do business, here's $1000!"
It would be nice to see these folks get some money, but reality isn't fruit and flowers and if you want something you have to take an active interest in it.
I'm not trying to put words in your mouth, but those who expect the world to be a happy place that gives to those who deserve (or even need, but don't deserve) are nice but very naive people who need a lesson in being realistic and basic human nature.
Cheers
Seems pretty clear to me. They can't say "$699 a license" and call it a "distribution fee" which the GPL allows. They are in violation, no doubt.
:)
I am curious, however, how the license could be revoked if they weren't in violation. My understanding is that programs like NMap are "released to the public" under the GPL. I know that you can distribute under multiple licenses, e.g. GPL to everyone, and another license for corporations who pay, but can you actually rescind a license once it's been granted without a "This license may be revoked for any reason" a la Microsoft?
IANAL
Cheers
True, but Sun doesn't have the marketshare to even begin pushing features down people's throats. I can't say I like Sun's elitism and two-faced attitude towards Open Source and Linux, but I wouldn't call them a Microsoft.
Cheers
What you need is a good analogy. This "amazing, magic beige box" is foolproof to some people, especially when they have personal -- albeit uninformed -- opinions in the mix.
Something like a locksmith. Would someone claim that a locksmith can't get into a lock unless he's cracked it before or has seen blueprints of the lock? Rubbish.
I can't think of any others off the top of my head, but that's the type of example you need. Computer programs, like locks, follow patterns and have standard ways of doing things (e.g. reading a string into a buffer). Once you understand the ways of the craft, you can break into any non-perfect system in enough time.
Cheers
All this reminds me of an older article... I haven't seen a Score 4+ comment yet, so forgive me if someone else has posted it:
From Slashdot:
"'We didn't fully understand the consequences of releasing software under the GPL (General Public License),' said Dick Schafer, deputy director of the NSA. 'We received a lot of loud complaints regarding our efforts with SE Linux.'"
Later in the linked article:
While stressing that the agency received a loud chorus of support as well, the chagrined Schafer said that the issue was contentious enough that "we won't be doing anything like that again."
What happened to make them so benevolent again?
From what I understand, the components that were distant from the CPU hence requiring a frontside bus are now inside the chip now with the AMD Athlon 64 line, hence there is no frontside bus. The speed is the equiv. of about 1600 MHz.
I'm sure I would remember more details if I wasn't so sleepy -- anyone more familiar want to expound here?
Cheers
"they're adopting a technology developed by a company a fraction of their size with a fraction of the resources. It gives AMD much more credibility."
How much credibility is AMD really lacking when buck for buck they've almost always been a better deal for the speed than Intel? How much are they really lacking when they beat Intel to the 1 GHz mark and for a long while thereafter had the fastest x86 desktop chip on the market? Or when they beat Intel to wide market penetration with 64 bit chips? Or when they beat Intel to 64-bit on the desktop? Or when benchmarks showed that the Athlon FX-51 beat both Intel's flagship and PPC chips?
If AMD doesn't have credibility now, this 'specification war' won't give it to them if you ask me.
Cheers
Very true, I agree with you.
The problem is that Origin as a whole was a pawn for a number of years. Wing Commander, one of the great original series of games (along with Warcraft, Command & Conquer, Doom/Quake), was last active in 1998 with the release of Wing Commander: Secret Ops. UO was good, so I hear, but got pushed in the direction of an EQ clone. Good folks were cut off and the Make Money Fast scheme was pushed down from EA.
Origin became nothing more than a commodity as opposed to an original developer.
The whole thing is sad if you ask me.
I guess this is an appropriate reply...
I think I've seen more 'indie' games in the last few years then ever before. At least 'indie' to me, a lot of publishers these days I haven't heard of before.
To give an example that might interest folks in this thread (Wing Commander fans), I just bought a game I could call 'innovative' called "X2-The Threat", created by Egosoft and published by Enlight (or maybe I have that backwards). I've never heard of either.
Anyway, in concept take Privateer, give it Freelancer style graphics and allow players to own multiple ships. It's your normal "buy a fighter, travel to X, do missions, etc." game, except that it goes a little further: you can buy fighters, cargo haulers, corvettes, destroyers, carriers, you name it. You can build your own fleet... the computer will fly anything you're not.
Apparently you can actually pilot a carrier which can carry ships inside (haven't gotten that far myself). You can even go a step further and build your own factories (space stations) -- no limit on number.
I've been waiting for a game like this since I picked up Privateer and haven't seen one until now, hence I think of it as 'innovative'. Overall the game isn't as polished as possible and might underwhelm some folks, but the freedom, reality (dock your own ship) and power you have are awesome.
If anyone else is aware of innovation along these lines, I'd like to hear it, this is the first game of it's kind that I've seen.
Cheers
Donut --
As a number of posts above have covered, a community still exists around a game that's been dead for roughly 6 years (WC: SO was released in '98).
I'm willing to bet that I'm not the only guy who wants Privateer on Linux or a modern OS, or even a multiplayer version.
What are your thoughts on releasing the source to the community for really old timers like Privateer, Armada, etc.? I think there's a lot of potential for a community project.
"To the Origin Guys: Look to the community, we are with you, many would help you start anew to become what you once were. Weh ave confident in you guys."
No doubt! There is still an entire community based around a game which hasn't been active in 6 years! Think of the last game you played from 1998, the year Wing Commander: Secret Ops was published as a free download. 6 years and mods and fan projects are still going.
I wish at least we could get them to OSS some of their older games for a little modification fun. I really think a community project to port some of the older games to newer platforms would really get somewhere -- there are enough 'old school' gamers like myself who would love to play Privateer on Linux. Or multiplayer!
Anyone know anything about getting game companies to GPL old games? I live in Austin and if possible would love to see something happen here.
Cheers
I do wonder if they could ever be persuaded to release the source for Privateer. That and maybe Armada. I've wanted to play these games on a modern PC for ages... imagine what could happen if someone like Icculus got his hands on it. Multiplayer privateer anyone?
OT: If anyone knows how to get this stuff running in Linux, or reliably in Windows, this is the place to post it... this info (especially for Linux) has proven difficult for me to find.
Cheers
"I would think the companies using these "Support Centers" will suffer for their callous disregard for their customers."
Most computer users that I know think computer mayhem is just normal. Most folks just want it to work and don't want to put in any more effort than the minimum to continue on with life.
Taking it a little further, most folks just want things to work in general. The less hassle, the better, and companies know this. At the end of the day, people take the path of least resistance.
I generally think people are too used to being screwed over to hold the company accountable or they're just too apathetic. That's why these draconian contracts and bad service are the norm. Until people stop giving these companies their money, this is the problem we'll have.
Cheers