I wouldn't mind having any long-run successful CEO like Bill Gates become president. I do however mind having an unsuccesful CEO as the current president.
Presumably when he said analog he meant an initial digital capture of an analog stream (like copying a VHS to a DVD, for example), followed by digital copies from then on. Considering that most people compress MPEG-2 digital recordings down to a lossy but smaller file anyway, this won't be a very big deal.
Definitely good points; and it's easier to become immersed in a game than music for most people. But I still can't see blaming the game for someone getting too into it - look at the thousands of other players who manage to play the game while still leading normal lives.
do more to facilitate avoidance and depressive or self-destructive behaviours.
This isn't a perfect analogy, but Alcoholics have a problem with letting Alcohol take over their lives, even if other factors started them drinking. They need to stay off Alcohol to get well, but they also need to deal with their other problems directly to stay well. The same can be said for video game addicts.
I'm not saying you can stop every suicide by paying more attention. But the mother needs to look the kid's whole world rather than just World of Warcraft to find what may have influenced him to commit suicide.
Let's say a gang of bullies made a kid's life completely miserable, and the kid's only escape was going home and playing blues songs by BB King on his guitar after school. If his mother takes away his guitar, and the kid kills himself soon after, would you blame the guitar manufacturer for making an "addictive" product? Or BB King for encouraging an "addictive" style of music?
Anything you are allowed to do for money, you can be forced to do for money by someone in power over you
Yeah... so what?
You're just stating the obvious: you can be ordered to do something by someone who has power over you.
If the power is consentual, then you can choose to either comply with the order or leave the power relationship: do your assigned work or quit your job. If your employer tells you to either do something illegal or lose your job (or the employer does something that constitutes sexual-harassment), then you can sue your employer.
If the power is not consentual, then you are a hostage and the police should be summoned to free you and arrest the hostage-taker.
I thought marriage vows (love, honour and obey) was legally OK in the USA?
Marriage vows that include illegal activities - "I vow to smuggle cocaine for you" - would not be legal.
You can legally promise to obey someone in a contract. We all kind of promise to obey our managers at work, and if we don't obey then it could become grounds for dismissal.
When Congress just upped the penality for showing a nipple on TV to half a million dollars, you have to ask why prostition is illegal? It has nothing to do with praticality and everything to do with morality.
Right on. I wonder if a $500,000 fee would stand up in court to a "punishment doesn't fit the crime" argument. The damage to the alleged 'victims' wasn't monetarily measurable and I doubt you could find a psychologist who'd testify that a glimpse of a blurry half covered nipple would cause any psychological harm to the people who saw it.
I am a life-long martial artist and it really bothers me that people think of training as "fighting"....Very strict contact rules apply; hitting harder doesn't score more points and will only get you DQed.
You're right - sorry. Perhaps Boxing would have been a better example; a way to win a Boxing match is to punch your opponent so hard he gets knocked out, and you score points each round based on how hard/often you hit your opponent.
Still, regardless of how civil Martial Arts with consent actully is, Martial Arts without consent would be considered assault or at least harassment, even if you weren't hitting very hard - a controlled Judo takedown performed on an unconsenting party is still considered assault, regardless of how careful you were to take the person down softly.
So if a girl signs a contract that says she has to be somebody's slave or engage in prostitution, is that contract legally valid?
Prostitution is a strange legal area to me (IANAL).
There are all sorts of things that are illegal to do without consent, but are perfectly legal to do with consent.
Fighting (Martial Arts vs. Assault), sex (consentual vs. rape), taking things (Free Halloween Candy vs. Burglary) - all these things are drastically different when you add the consent of both parties.
Prostitution is consentual sex + money. In theory it isn't any more dangerous than consentual sex without money. And when properly regulated, then even in practice it's still not any more dangerous.
Many women legally have sex for money reasons, even if it's not a direct obvious exchange as with prostitution.
Same thing that happens to the Nielsen company, who collects TV ratings by installing a special set top box in a sample of homes around the country who agree to participate: Absolutely nothing.
When it's completely transparent, and completely opt-in, there's nothing wrong with it.
Just like if you hire a bodyguard to guard you every minute from a safe distance, you couldn't go and sue him for stalking you. Sure stalking laws could apply to the situation - someone is following you around all day long, but since you asked for it and he'd stop if you tell him to stop, the law isn't really relevant.
Look at Lo-jack, or On-star. These are services where you agree to have your vehicle's location tracked - in fact you ASK them to - because you want their assistance in emergencies.
If you install a toolbar such as Alexa, you are doing so because you want this collective link tracking feature:
"Alexa's Related Links are a great way to discover new sites. As you surf the web, the toolbar is constantly updating with information about where other users visit." - and recommendations are made using this collective site-popularity data.
You and thousands of other users share your usage data, to help each other find sites of mutual interest. As long as you know about it, it's a service that you are asking for, so there's nothing wrong with it.
So essentially you're saying... bend over and take it?
That's BS. Blizzard PROMISED in EULA 3B that you can transfer the game and all parts thereof to another. A reasonable person would interpret that as meaning you can sell your copy of the game, and the new owner can then pay for a subscription and play the game. Yet according to Blizzard's support replies, there is no way for the new owner to establish an account to pay the subscription to play the game.
The lawsuit wouldn't be against the friend, btw, because the friend acted in accord with his responsibilities. The new owner agreed to the new EULA, but Blizzard will not keep its end of the bargain and give the new owner a chance to play.
But once you get that complicated you could just use the actual terms - buy the game materials, use your cd key to make an account, transfer the game materials as per section 3B - but how do you transfer the account?
So Blizzard just needs to explain how to transfer ownership of the account that the authentication key is locked to, and all will be well. I'm sure that's what will happen in a few days time.
Actually, you don't want free milk in the jug your friend gave you, you want to *pay* for the milk, you just don't want to pay for the jug.
No, it's not that he doesn't want to pay for the jug.
He did pay for a jug - he purchased a used jug. His friend was specifically authorized to transfer ownership of the jug in section 3B of the eula: "You may permanently transfer ownership of the Game and all parts thereof..."
Now blizzard is refusing to let him purchase refills for his jug, because the jug does not have a virgin (unused) CD key.
Currently it seems like it's impossible to transfer "all parts thereof", since in order to use the game you need to establish an account, and a CD-key can only be used to establish a single account. Therefor the "all parts thereof" changes when the game is first registered, and you are left with "all parts thereof except a virgin CD key".
It seems Blizzard needs to clarify the process for exercising your EULA right to "transfer ownership" to another person.
Checking the 'Site Blocking' option in Adblock options worked perfectly. Now when I try to click that secunia link it just doesn't do anything. Same if I try to paste that pseudo-paypal link into the address bar and hit enter.
Not if they're your faction. There's no intra-faction PvP. What you need to do is talk some of the other faction into going after the guy, which is hard, since you can't communicate between factions.
It's easy to communicate between factions. Log off, create a char as the other faction,/tell away.
You can make a copy of a CD for backup purposes legally, but you can't circumvent the copy protection to do so without breaking the law.
Isn't this like saying you can freely come and go to a public park as you please, but it's illegal to unhook the latch or scale the fence to get into the park in the first place?
Maybe we need to think up a clever interpretation of what exactly is "copyright protection" to deal with the DMCA?
>it's not fair to compare a vendor's distribution of Linux with a clean install of Windows XP.
Why? It's what you get on the CD that you install from.
Then compare what you'd get on a well-made restore CD from a Windows vendor.
This statement says to me you haven't used Linux in any large capacity
True... I telnet to unix at work for web/oracle development, and use FC3 at home as a hobby, XP Pro as my main. I've only had root on FC3, on two PC's at home.
But I do understand that an OS is pretty useless without apps to do things on it. And the bundles you get with Linux are much more versatile than what you normally get bundled with Windows, and you'd have to search individually for many windows apps you want to match a linux bundle.
However:
Besides, if you're talking about something someone else sets up for you then you're not talking about ease of installation.
Isn't using a distro the equivalent of someone else setting it up for you, just not actually taking the last step of installing it? Someone had to package all those non-kernel apps together, test them, and create a convenient installer. Checking boxes in the distro installation routine is like checking the boxes for additional software when ordering a Dell online. It's just a difference in the process; you get a user-customizable distro from Red Hat/Fedora, or you pay for a customized WinXP distro and installation from Dell.
I noticed you took off Adaware/Spybot. Are you honestly trying to tell me you'd drop spyware removal tools from the list of common software for Joe User?
They're actually the first things I install, off a flash memory disk, before even connecting to windows update:-) I shouldn't have removed those, but perhaps you'd choose a package from McAffee or Norton that includes security/antispyware programs.
Viruses in Linux are rare, but shouldn't you still install a virus checker, like f-prot?
The announcement was posted on Wikimedia - I guess I should have referred to the people who would approve or deny google's offer as "The Wikimedia Foundation"?
All you're saying is that you like the bundled applications in FC3's linux distribution better than Windows XP, right?
If you liked the the MS bundled apps (Windows Firewall,Wordpad,WMP,Outlook Express,Paint/Photo Editor,MSN Messenger), it'd look like this:
1. Install XP, answer a few easy questions (time zone, etc.) and activate it. 2. Windowsupdate it. 3. Find and install scanner driver - often automatically for non-bleeding edge products. (optional reboot) 4. Find and install printer driver - often automatically for non-bleeding edge products. (optional reboot) 5. Install Grisoft AVG. (antivirus) 5a. Add 3rd party apps to taste 6. Find and install video driver. 7. Reboot (deal with 800x600 until this reboot)
Compared to a recent Fedora Core 3 install: 1. Install FC3 (choose a config and/or customize it). 2. Install atrpms apt-kickstart 3. apt-get dist-upgrade 4. apt-get install nvidia-graphics 4a. Add 3rd party apps to taste 5. Copy/modify xorg.conf 6. re-'init' or reboot
7 vs 6 comparable steps isn't bad at all. And in the future Windows may come bundled with an anti-virus program.
Of course, my real point is that it's not fair to compare a vendor's distribution of Linux with a clean install of Windows XP.
If you bought from a windows vendor, like HP or Dell, they would do the latest OS updates, and you could purchase and have them install anti-virus, firewall, media software, cd burning software, adobe PS elements, etc, and they'd be ready to use when you boot it up.
I dare say if you had to install an empty version of Linux (OpenOffice, Firefox, etc, NOT bundled) vs. a Windows XP CD, you'd have a much easier time getting up and running with the Windows XP CD.
And yeah HP/Dell do charge money for their services and you have to buy a computer too, but there could be a business where someone sells Windows Installation, including all licenses for the extra apps you want. They might distribute/sell a versatile image that can handle varied hardware configurations, just like RedHat FC3 does.
I can't help but wonder if this could backfire on wikipedia tho... suppose somewhere down the line they're heavily dependent on google's help.. and google disagrees with some content on it (read: investors aren't happy with content), there's a possibility of censorship or removal of content?
It's not like google has bought control of Wikipedia. If wiki accepts google's gift, that's nice. If google tries to get pushy later, wiki rejects the gift and reverts back to their old hosting solution.
I don't really see a problem here. Though I'm surprised google didn't just ask to include wiki article summaries in their results directly, and then offer bandwidth help as a way to help wiki make it happen.
Basically say, "We'd like to include wiki summaries in google search results, and if you'd like to let us do this but your current bandwidth can't support it, then we'll gladly assist you with bandwidth".
Translated, in case something should blow up, we want to wait as long as possible before not being able to say, "Hey, it's in beta. What did you expect?"
Well it's free and in beta, right? What did you expect?
But hopefully they also give a discount to advertisers who place ads on Gmail, since Gmail's still in beta. Or at least warn them.
Slashdot Mirror
*cough*...speeding tickets ... *cough*cough*
I wouldn't mind having any long-run successful CEO like Bill Gates become president. I do however mind having an unsuccesful CEO as the current president.
Presumably when he said analog he meant an initial digital capture of an analog stream (like copying a VHS to a DVD, for example), followed by digital copies from then on. Considering that most people compress MPEG-2 digital recordings down to a lossy but smaller file anyway, this won't be a very big deal.
Definitely good points; and it's easier to become immersed in a game than music for most people. But I still can't see blaming the game for someone getting too into it - look at the thousands of other players who manage to play the game while still leading normal lives.
do more to facilitate avoidance and depressive or self-destructive behaviours.
This isn't a perfect analogy, but Alcoholics have a problem with letting Alcohol take over their lives, even if other factors started them drinking. They need to stay off Alcohol to get well, but they also need to deal with their other problems directly to stay well. The same can be said for video game addicts.
I'm not saying you can stop every suicide by paying more attention. But the mother needs to look the kid's whole world rather than just World of Warcraft to find what may have influenced him to commit suicide.
Let's say a gang of bullies made a kid's life completely miserable, and the kid's only escape was going home and playing blues songs by BB King on his guitar after school. If his mother takes away his guitar, and the kid kills himself soon after, would you blame the guitar manufacturer for making an "addictive" product? Or BB King for encouraging an "addictive" style of music?
Anything you are allowed to do for money, you can be forced to do for money by someone in power over you
Yeah... so what?
You're just stating the obvious: you can be ordered to do something by someone who has power over you.
If the power is consentual, then you can choose to either comply with the order or leave the power relationship: do your assigned work or quit your job. If your employer tells you to either do something illegal or lose your job (or the employer does something that constitutes sexual-harassment), then you can sue your employer.
If the power is not consentual, then you are a hostage and the police should be summoned to free you and arrest the hostage-taker.
What am I missing?
I thought marriage vows (love, honour and obey) was legally OK in the USA?
Marriage vows that include illegal activities - "I vow to smuggle cocaine for you" - would not be legal.
You can legally promise to obey someone in a contract. We all kind of promise to obey our managers at work, and if we don't obey then it could become grounds for dismissal.
When Congress just upped the penality for showing a nipple on TV to half a million dollars, you have to ask why prostition is illegal? It has nothing to do with praticality and everything to do with morality.
...Very strict contact rules apply; hitting harder doesn't score more points and will only get you DQed.
Right on. I wonder if a $500,000 fee would stand up in court to a "punishment doesn't fit the crime" argument. The damage to the alleged 'victims' wasn't monetarily measurable and I doubt you could find a psychologist who'd testify that a glimpse of a blurry half covered nipple would cause any psychological harm to the people who saw it.
I am a life-long martial artist and it really bothers me that people think of training as "fighting".
You're right - sorry. Perhaps Boxing would have been a better example; a way to win a Boxing match is to punch your opponent so hard he gets knocked out, and you score points each round based on how hard/often you hit your opponent.
Still, regardless of how civil Martial Arts with consent actully is, Martial Arts without consent would be considered assault or at least harassment, even if you weren't hitting very hard - a controlled Judo takedown performed on an unconsenting party is still considered assault, regardless of how careful you were to take the person down softly.
So if a girl signs a contract that says she has to be somebody's slave or engage in prostitution, is that contract legally valid?
Prostitution is a strange legal area to me (IANAL).
There are all sorts of things that are illegal to do without consent, but are perfectly legal to do with consent.
Fighting (Martial Arts vs. Assault), sex (consentual vs. rape), taking things (Free Halloween Candy vs. Burglary) - all these things are drastically different when you add the consent of both parties.
Prostitution is consentual sex + money. In theory it isn't any more dangerous than consentual sex without money. And when properly regulated, then even in practice it's still not any more dangerous.
Many women legally have sex for money reasons, even if it's not a direct obvious exchange as with prostitution.
So why is it illegal?
Same thing that happens to the Nielsen company, who collects TV ratings by installing a special set top box in a sample of homes around the country who agree to participate: Absolutely nothing.
When it's completely transparent, and completely opt-in, there's nothing wrong with it.
Just like if you hire a bodyguard to guard you every minute from a safe distance, you couldn't go and sue him for stalking you. Sure stalking laws could apply to the situation - someone is following you around all day long, but since you asked for it and he'd stop if you tell him to stop, the law isn't really relevant.
Look at Lo-jack, or On-star. These are services where you agree to have your vehicle's location tracked - in fact you ASK them to - because you want their assistance in emergencies.
If you install a toolbar such as Alexa, you are doing so because you want this collective link tracking feature:
"Alexa's Related Links are a great way to discover new sites. As you surf the web, the toolbar is constantly updating with information about where other users visit." - and recommendations are made using this collective site-popularity data.
You and thousands of other users share your usage data, to help each other find sites of mutual interest. As long as you know about it, it's a service that you are asking for, so there's nothing wrong with it.
So essentially you're saying... bend over and take it?
That's BS. Blizzard PROMISED in EULA 3B that you can transfer the game and all parts thereof to another. A reasonable person would interpret that as meaning you can sell your copy of the game, and the new owner can then pay for a subscription and play the game. Yet according to Blizzard's support replies, there is no way for the new owner to establish an account to pay the subscription to play the game.
The lawsuit wouldn't be against the friend, btw, because the friend acted in accord with his responsibilities. The new owner agreed to the new EULA, but Blizzard will not keep its end of the bargain and give the new owner a chance to play.
Nice; that's a more complete analogy
But once you get that complicated you could just use the actual terms - buy the game materials, use your cd key to make an account, transfer the game materials as per section 3B - but how do you transfer the account?
So Blizzard just needs to explain how to transfer ownership of the account that the authentication key is locked to, and all will be well. I'm sure that's what will happen in a few days time.
Actually, you don't want free milk in the jug your friend gave you, you want to *pay* for the milk, you just don't want to pay for the jug.
No, it's not that he doesn't want to pay for the jug.
He did pay for a jug - he purchased a used jug. His friend was specifically authorized to transfer ownership of the jug in section 3B of the eula: "You may permanently transfer ownership of the Game and all parts thereof..."
Now blizzard is refusing to let him purchase refills for his jug, because the jug does not have a virgin (unused) CD key.
Currently it seems like it's impossible to transfer "all parts thereof", since in order to use the game you need to establish an account, and a CD-key can only be used to establish a single account. Therefor the "all parts thereof" changes when the game is first registered, and you are left with "all parts thereof except a virgin CD key".
It seems Blizzard needs to clarify the process for exercising your EULA right to "transfer ownership" to another person.
Blue?
I don't have a copy of the EULA, not owning the game
:-)
You can still RTFEULA: http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/legal/eula.html
Checking the 'Site Blocking' option in Adblock options worked perfectly. Now when I try to click that secunia link it just doesn't do anything. Same if I try to paste that pseudo-paypal link into the address bar and hit enter.
Forgot that rule on PvP servers - you can have both factions on RP or Normal servers.
The adblock method doesn't work either...
Not if they're your faction. There's no intra-faction PvP. What you need to do is talk some of the other faction into going after the guy, which is hard, since you can't communicate between factions.
/tell away.
It's easy to communicate between factions. Log off, create a char as the other faction,
You can make a copy of a CD for backup purposes legally, but you can't circumvent the copy protection to do so without breaking the law.
Isn't this like saying you can freely come and go to a public park as you please, but it's illegal to unhook the latch or scale the fence to get into the park in the first place?
Maybe we need to think up a clever interpretation of what exactly is "copyright protection" to deal with the DMCA?
>it's not fair to compare a vendor's distribution of Linux with a clean install of Windows XP.
:-) I shouldn't have removed those, but perhaps you'd choose a package from McAffee or Norton that includes security/antispyware programs.
Why? It's what you get on the CD that you install from.
Then compare what you'd get on a well-made restore CD from a Windows vendor.
This statement says to me you haven't used Linux in any large capacity
True... I telnet to unix at work for web/oracle development, and use FC3 at home as a hobby, XP Pro as my main. I've only had root on FC3, on two PC's at home.
But I do understand that an OS is pretty useless without apps to do things on it. And the bundles you get with Linux are much more versatile than what you normally get bundled with Windows, and you'd have to search individually for many windows apps you want to match a linux bundle.
However:
Besides, if you're talking about something someone else sets up for you then you're not talking about ease of installation.
Isn't using a distro the equivalent of someone else setting it up for you, just not actually taking the last step of installing it? Someone had to package all those non-kernel apps together, test them, and create a convenient installer. Checking boxes in the distro installation routine is like checking the boxes for additional software when ordering a Dell online. It's just a difference in the process; you get a user-customizable distro from Red Hat/Fedora, or you pay for a customized WinXP distro and installation from Dell.
I noticed you took off Adaware/Spybot. Are you honestly trying to tell me you'd drop spyware removal tools from the list of common software for Joe User?
They're actually the first things I install, off a flash memory disk, before even connecting to windows update
Viruses in Linux are rare, but shouldn't you still install a virus checker, like f-prot?
I know, I just didn't know how to refer to them.
The announcement was posted on Wikimedia - I guess I should have referred to the people who would approve or deny google's offer as "The Wikimedia Foundation"?
All you're saying is that you like the bundled applications in FC3's linux distribution better than Windows XP, right?
If you liked the the MS bundled apps (Windows Firewall,Wordpad,WMP,Outlook Express,Paint/Photo Editor,MSN Messenger), it'd look like this:
1. Install XP, answer a few easy questions (time zone, etc.) and activate it.
2. Windowsupdate it.
3. Find and install scanner driver - often automatically for non-bleeding edge products. (optional reboot)
4. Find and install printer driver - often automatically for non-bleeding edge products. (optional reboot)
5. Install Grisoft AVG. (antivirus)
5a. Add 3rd party apps to taste
6. Find and install video driver.
7. Reboot (deal with 800x600 until this reboot)
Compared to a recent Fedora Core 3 install:
1. Install FC3 (choose a config and/or customize it).
2. Install atrpms apt-kickstart
3. apt-get dist-upgrade
4. apt-get install nvidia-graphics
4a. Add 3rd party apps to taste
5. Copy/modify xorg.conf
6. re-'init' or reboot
7 vs 6 comparable steps isn't bad at all. And in the future Windows may come bundled with an anti-virus program.
Of course, my real point is that it's not fair to compare a vendor's distribution of Linux with a clean install of Windows XP.
If you bought from a windows vendor, like HP or Dell, they would do the latest OS updates, and you could purchase and have them install anti-virus, firewall, media software, cd burning software, adobe PS elements, etc, and they'd be ready to use when you boot it up.
I dare say if you had to install an empty version of Linux (OpenOffice, Firefox, etc, NOT bundled) vs. a Windows XP CD, you'd have a much easier time getting up and running with the Windows XP CD.
And yeah HP/Dell do charge money for their services and you have to buy a computer too, but there could be a business where someone sells Windows Installation, including all licenses for the extra apps you want. They might distribute/sell a versatile image that can handle varied hardware configurations, just like RedHat FC3 does.
I can't help but wonder if this could backfire on wikipedia tho... suppose somewhere down the line they're heavily dependent on google's help.. and google disagrees with some content on it (read: investors aren't happy with content), there's a possibility of censorship or removal of content?
It's not like google has bought control of Wikipedia. If wiki accepts google's gift, that's nice. If google tries to get pushy later, wiki rejects the gift and reverts back to their old hosting solution.
I don't really see a problem here. Though I'm surprised google didn't just ask to include wiki article summaries in their results directly, and then offer bandwidth help as a way to help wiki make it happen.
Basically say, "We'd like to include wiki summaries in google search results, and if you'd like to let us do this but your current bandwidth can't support it, then we'll gladly assist you with bandwidth".
What I can't find are any game time cards so I can give the game and a year's worth of playing to my brother as an extremely late Christmas present
If you have a credit card you could just pay for it when he installs it, or buy a WoW game card from newegg for $30 shipped.
But maybe your problem is that you don't have a credit card?
Translated, in case something should blow up, we want to wait as long as possible before not being able to say, "Hey, it's in beta. What did you expect?"
Well it's free and in beta, right? What did you expect?
But hopefully they also give a discount to advertisers who place ads on Gmail, since Gmail's still in beta. Or at least warn them.