Ever wished that every tech website and commercial orgnisation didn't assume that you are an Apple drone with an iphone? I refer to the summary, which uses the phrase:
your iPhone
Hey! I have an iphone? I didn't know. Could you send it to me? Thanks!
I have a perfectly good mobile phone which works well with platform independent software and includes accelerometers, touch sensitivity and other amazing innovations. Yet my phone and my custom are of no interest to the majority of tech websites or businesses.
Similarly, it pisses me off that 90% of music docks are ipod-only, rather than being compatible with something crazy like a standard mini-jack.
Cue moderation to -1000, mild criticism of something tangentially connected to Apple.
...the horribly broken multiplayer in Demigod is an example of exactly why many people choose to pirate games rather than pay upwards of $90 (in Australia, equivalent in your local currency) for broken software.
Stardock CEO Brad Wardell was unavailable for comment, although analysts have noted that he could afford to spend less time preaching and more time supervising the production of functioning games.
(It's actually great to see this attitude, but game companies would be in a much more defensible position if they released fully functional software, rather than late-stage betas. I know many people pirate games simply to find out whether a game works properly on their machine or not.)
So it was going to be a game in which the player spent years growing and being nourished by self, family, friends, community and the state until the late teens before being shipped to another country and then unexpectedly killed without warning, after which the game becomes locked and unplayable?
I understand your point - but it is extremely hard to see how this game could have been a serious depiction of war. Would it include horrible brutality by some of the soliders on your own side? Would it throw up the extreme moral quandraries surrounding civilian casualties and the invasion of Iraq itself? Would it even include civilians? Animals? Disease?
That's a question that should be asked of the Australian taxpayer. Perhaps research of this nature should not be publicly funded in that way.
Thanks, but most of us would probably rather have wi-fi as a thing that has been invented rather than living in your libertarian fantasy world. Particularly down here in our socialist utopia, where we are not so simpleminded as to think that anything involving the government is inherently wrong and bad.
Of course, Dell, MS, Nintendo and co are welcome to go and develop their own, non-infringing wireless technologies.
I have also experienced the pain of stopping Civilization in order to reclaim my time/life. Civ 2 never leaves a man, not really.
I agree that those who are quick to dismiss the suggestion that games are potentially addictive have not really experienced the depths of what Civ, and certain other games, can do to you:
- playing for up to 24 hours straight - not dressing, eating, washing - avoiding going to the toilet as it is too difficult to tear oneself away even for 2 minutes - becoming extremely dehydrated due to a failure to even register thirst - avoiding other activities in order to continue playing - orchestrating complex and deceptive plans to arrange life so that one can continue playing - losing any sense of time whilst playing - being unable to play for a short period of time without it turning into a very long period of time - ignoring detrimental impact on personal and professional life caused by play time
My theory is that games are sufficiently more fun than the activities humans are evolved to enjoy that they have the potential to almost totally overthrow our free will (as the above list tends to suggest). Our pathetic little monkey brains are supposed to enjoy running around chasing things, bright colours, maybe music... when we concoct a machine that lets us temporarily believe that we rule the world/universe, or assume the identity of our heroes, or travel to amazing places in space or time, or perform feats which would ordinarily be far beyond our abilities, we go into pleasure overdrive and never want to leave.
And when those things are combined with a well balanced and subtle reward and punishment-based conditioning system (as most good games arguably do) we're helpless.
Laws which are not followed in a logical way are not laws. The whole point of following laws is to make people follow them even when that is not the most popular or expedient course - otherwise they would be unneccessary.
You are talking about mob rule. It is an objectively worse and less just way to run a society, and it should be condemned.
As far as I am concerned, Bethesda still hasn't released a final, stable build of the base game. Instead of wasting time with minor content additions, they should really sort out the fundamental stability problems the PC version of Fallout 3 continues to have.
In particular, I have personally seen severe stability issues with this game on three completely separate PCs (out of a total of three that I have tried it on, so 100%). Two of these were built in the last 12 months (one, sadly, for the express purpose of playing Fallout 3... a friend of mine is a tad obsessed with Oblivion and got rather overexcited about F3). All of them contain nothing but quality brand name parts etc, and all of them run other games well. Two of them even run Crysis well at very high detail.
Yet Fallout 3 three crashes on all of them - not just nice crashes, but serious, OS-killing crashes as well as crashes to desktop. On one, it's every hour or so. On another, when specific events happen (like opening VATS, shooting things... BAM back to desktop). On the third, it's around 5-15 minutes between crashes. On all three of them, it's basically not worth playing - you just know that the game is going to die on you unexpectedly sooner or later, which really breaks the immersion and doesn't exactly promote investment of time into playing it.
Over at the Bethesda forums, gangs of fanboys ramble on about how the game works well for them on their systems so therefore anyone who has issues must be experiencing a problem with their PC, not the game. But when you have multiple PCs, which otherwise run well in a variety of similar applications, and one particular game causes serious and replicable crashes, then there is something wrong with the game. And it's clear from the forums and from a quick Google search that there are many, many others who have similar issues.
So less DLC, more properly tested and polished games!!! Dammit Bethesda, I loved Oblivion and you've pretty much burnt through your credits with this farce.
Apparently you're not a console fanboy - this seems to be common parlance amongst PS3/X-Boxers.
The marketing drones clearly decided that "expansion pack" or "add on" or other "English" phrases were too "understandable" for "humans" and so began employing this crappy acronym instead. Another favourite of mine is "SKU" which apparently means "thing for sale" or "item for sale", although I am unsure of its precise meaning.
Yes, I rather meant though that any movie "could be a western" if sufficiently reduced. Star Trek: two young cowboys from rival families are forced to work together to defeat the an evil new gang of bad guys who have come to town after their parents are unexpectedly killed.
On the other hand, you could take Star Wars and redo it as a Western without any loss of story.
Yeah! Like that John Wayne movie where the Sheriff has a giant, slow moving device which can destroy entire towns, and only throwing a rock off a horse from close range at a particular point on the surface of the device can destroy it! And wagons can travel faster than light, but this capability sometimes breaks down, leading to exciting chase sequences before the wagon zips away to an unknown location! And cowboys can use mysterious powers to control physical objects and influence other people!
Frankly, if Star Wars can be a Western I think anything can be a Western.
What aspects of Star Trek are so unique that you cannot draw similar parallels?
Saddam played chicken with the international community. The US didn't blink and deposed him.
Ah yes, that would explain why the US has intervened in the more obviously problematic cases of Zimbabwe and Sudan, and why you don't trade with a far more murderous and dangerous regime with nuclear weapons in China. Oh, wait.
Jesus you're really showing your lack of knowledge in this thread. Truly amazing. You seem to think it's OK for someone to invade another country and destroy an entire city using banned weapons on people. What a cunt.
Thank you, I thought I was going insane.
The twisted morality of some of the posts in this thread is truly scary.
1. We invade your country, you fight back, you are now a terrorist.
2. Anyone who fails to immediately betray you to our invading forces, whether civilian or soldier, man or woman, child or old person, is also a terrorist.
3. We are justified in killing anyone who is a terrorist, whether they engage us in direct combat or not.
4. In addition, because you are terorrists we are not bound by any laws of war in dealing with you, and may thus use any weapons and/or tactics we want.
So in your sick, sorry world, once we are at war we can kill all the civilians we want, and that is a good thing.
Dude, that's what war is. If you don't want war, then don't fight them. Don't sit there and pretend that war is a noble thing like a video game with so many rules. That only makes it more palatable to fight. I'd put this to you - if civilians understood that they would get killed in wars too, they might be a lot less likely to build, finance and cheer on the armies to fight them.
No, that's what a war crime is. Look it up some time.
No wonder the US doesn't want to sign on to the International Criminal Court...
As soon as you are a fighting force hiding amongst the populace you are no longer part of a legal army, you are a terrorist, and anyone assisting these people are also the same.
So if Russia or China invaded Arkansas or South Dakota or wherever you are from, you would line up in the rural plains with your.22 rifle and fight their Spec Ops forces in open warfare?
And if they invaded your home town, and you shot at them from a building, you would consider them justified in arbitrarily killing anyone in the general area, including old people, women and children?
War is messy and regrettable and sucks for all involved and we would have avoided Fallujah if we could have.
Yes, if only those civilians hadn't sat there 10,000 kilometres away doing absolutely nothing to harm the United States, you would have been able to avoid the heartache of having to massacre them in their own city following the fabrication of evidence about WMDs.
blame the property loss for burned houses on the insurgents, who made those family's houses a war zone
So Iraqis in Iraq fighting a foreign country which launched a premeditated war of aggression (for whatever reason) made Iraq a warzone?
remaining vulnerable civilians could have been escorted out by the insurgents, but were instead left as human shields by a cowardly enemy
IT WAS A FUCKING URBAN AREA. They lived there. America rocked up and blew it to hell.
The US gave ample time and warning for the population to leave safely before hand though. So everyone within the city after that point would have been considered a combatant.
A participant in a war doesn't get to define who is and is not a combatant. It is an objective question.
If I point a gun at you and say "do X now or I will consider you a threat to my safety" and I then shoot you when you refuse to comply, I am still a murderer.
7.3 Google reserves the right (but shall have no obligation) to pre-screen, review, flag, filter, modify, refuse or remove any or all Content from any of Google's products, software, services and web sites. For some of Google's products, software, services and web sites, Google may provide tools to filter out explicit sexual content. These tools include the SafeSearch preference settings (see google.com/help/customize.html#safe). In addition, there are commercially available services and software to limit access to material that you may find objectionable.
If that doesn't make it clear that Google only plans to filter Google services, I don't know what will.
Except that you're totally incorrect. Let's now replace the word Content (and replace "Services" again in that definition):
7.3 Google reserves the right... to pre-screen, review, flag, filter, modify, refuse or remove any or all information (such as data files, written text, computer software, music, audio files or other sounds, photographs, videos or other images) which you may have access to as part of, or through your use of any of Google's products, software, services and web sites from any of Google's products, software, services and web sites.
The part in italics is critical. They are explicitly saying that it is not limited to Google's own content - it is anything you access using Google's "Services" which may be filtered. So long as you use Chrome to access it, they have the full range of rights they list (pre-screen, review, flag, filter, modify, refuse, remove).
Chrome is a 'product' and 'software', and therefore a 'Service'. The whole of the WWW is something you 'have access to as part of, or through your use of' Chrome. Google reserves the right to filter, monitor etc etc your use OF THE WWW WHEN YOU USE CHROME.
Why, oh why, are people so hell bent on trusting massive corporations to just "do the right thing" and have their customers' best interests at heart when the evidence to the contrary is put in front of their faces over and over and over again?
I agree with the article. This is a clause which should raise a red flag. By using Chrome, you are agreeing to Google having the right to filter or modify the content you are accessing. "Flag" would tend to suggest they have the right to record the content you are accessing and report it to others.
I'm not saying they are doing these things now, but why would you agree to them ever having these rights?
They are doing it now, and it is a useful service. Apple recently started using Google's malware filtering system in Safari. Google is merely accurately describing how the service functions. Google scans content it deems "suspicious", flags it if it contains malware, warns other users.
If that's what they are doing, there is absolutely no reason why the EULA cannot be more specific and limit it to that.
At the moment they have unrestricted rights to filter and "flag" anything they want.
Just because it's boilerplate doesn't mean it's ineffective.
Googleâ(TM)s products, software, services and web sites (referred to collectively as the âoeServicesâ
So "Services" includes Chrome itself (software/products) not just Google search etc. "Content" is:
information (such as data files, written text, computer software, music, audio files or other sounds, photographs, videos or other images) which you may have access to as part of, or through your use of, the Services
Therefore, anything you access through Chrome is "Content".
So, by clause 7.3, you actually do agree that Google may, in its discretion,
pre-screen, review, flag, filter, modify, refuse or remove
anything that you access through Chrome. Nothing in 7.3 is limited to safesearch or other optional filtering services - the clause would be entirely compatible with Google silently monitoring and filtering what you can and cannot see on-line using Chrome on an entirely arbitrary basis.
I agree with the article. This is a clause which should raise a red flag. By using Chrome, you are agreeing to Google having the right to filter or modify the content you are accessing. "Flag" would tend to suggest they have the right to record the content you are accessing and report it to others.
I'm not saying they are doing these things now, but why would you agree to them ever having these rights?
I need all the CPU speed, RAM, and HD space I can get [...] Which means that a maxed-out MacBook is the right choice, for me
I feel like I'm taking crazy pills.
Seriously, go and spec out a "maxed out" MacBook Pro in terms of these components and then go to Dell's website and build the exact same computer. Please. For your own sake.
I just did this and came out with a Macbook Pro for $6,300 (Australian) and a Dell for $4500.
It's the Applethromorphic principle: Apple is successful, so whatever Apple does is the only thing it could have done!
Apple could easily charge a lower margin and move into larger volume production.
Dell is coming at them from this direction, and doing it quite well. Dell has gone from massive production and sometimes dubious quality, to massive production and fairly good quality. I picked up an XPS laptop last year and I am extremely impressed with it in every respect. Apple will find itself in trouble if Dell manages to get to massive production and excellent quality, because suddenly there will be no reason at all (from a hardware perspective) for anyone to spend the extra $$$ on an Apple product.
GP is a moron. Syndicate and Magic Carpet are other epic Molyneux games. I thought the first Black & White was pretty amazing too.
Theme Park is testament to the fact that some games just work better in 2D... I STILL break it out and play it for hours from time to time. I just wish they would make a properly updated version that runs nicely in XP/Vista.
In fact, I wish Good Old Games would get hold of the Bullfrog catalogue - now THAT would be worth paying for.
The problem occurs because of the international scope of this law
Yes, but publishing on the Internet has an international scope.
Let's say I'm a minor British celebrity (*involuntary shudder*). Let's say you run www.ukrumours.com, a popular gossip site about celebrities in the UK. The site is hosted on a computer physically located in New York, and you yourself happen to be in the US. Nevertheless, many people in the UK read the site, some avidly. You post something on the site which is defamatory of me, as well as being false and unjustified. People in the UK read it, and it harms my reputation as a result.
I would be interested to know why anyone thinks that your personal geographical location in the above example makes a whit of difference as to whether you defamed me and caused me harm in the UK. This is the principle behind the "international scope" of defamation law in the UK (and Australia, and various other places). The Courts have, perhaps rightly, concluded that where a person is located when they put something on-line, or where a web server is located, are irrelevant questions in an age where anyone, anywhere can read any website they choose to.
The "international scope" of UK defamation law is not such that an American can sue another American for a publication taking place only in America, for instance.
it can be excessively expensive to defend against charges brought with minimal expense and without significant danger of retribution in an form
I do not know where people get this from (I realise it is suggested in TFA/summary). A plaintiff will still incur legal costs, and in the UK will also have to pay the bulk of the defendant's costs if the claim is defeated. So a plaintiff bears a very great risk in bringing a claim.
But unable to afford a lengthy international trip for the sole purpose of defending themselves against merit-less claims.
If it's truly unmeritorious a half decent lawyer should be able to knock it on the head for you without the need for you to fly to the UK to appear.
I'm not a British citizen. I have no assets in the UK anybody could seize.
Why should I care if you sue me in a UK court? You could get a court order entitling you to a million pound. How would you collect? Ask me to send you a cheque from the US?
As I just posted here, a judgment definitely CAN be enforced in the US even though it was given in a foreign jurisdiction. You simply commence a proceeding in a US court in which you prove that you obtained judgment in the UK and ask the Court to give effect to the judgment in the US.
You may be able to convince the court of some policy basis upon which it should not give effect to a judgment. However, breaking another countries laws in another country is not generally a sound argument as to why a foreign judgment should not be enforced against you.
Slashdot Mirror
Guess why your (not an i-)phone doesn't get featured on the front page of slashdot?
YOU'RE NOT FLYING A FUCKING HELICOPTER WITH YOUR PHONE.
I was not complaining about the story. I was complaining about the implicit assertion that anyone reading it owns an iphone.
Oh, and this.
Ever wished that every tech website and commercial orgnisation didn't assume that you are an Apple drone with an iphone? I refer to the summary, which uses the phrase:
Hey! I have an iphone? I didn't know. Could you send it to me? Thanks!
I have a perfectly good mobile phone which works well with platform independent software and includes accelerometers, touch sensitivity and other amazing innovations. Yet my phone and my custom are of no interest to the majority of tech websites or businesses.
Similarly, it pisses me off that 90% of music docks are ipod-only, rather than being compatible with something crazy like a standard mini-jack.
Cue moderation to -1000, mild criticism of something tangentially connected to Apple.
...the horribly broken multiplayer in Demigod is an example of exactly why many people choose to pirate games rather than pay upwards of $90 (in Australia, equivalent in your local currency) for broken software.
Stardock CEO Brad Wardell was unavailable for comment, although analysts have noted that he could afford to spend less time preaching and more time supervising the production of functioning games.
(It's actually great to see this attitude, but game companies would be in a much more defensible position if they released fully functional software, rather than late-stage betas. I know many people pirate games simply to find out whether a game works properly on their machine or not.)
So it was going to be a game in which the player spent years growing and being nourished by self, family, friends, community and the state until the late teens before being shipped to another country and then unexpectedly killed without warning, after which the game becomes locked and unplayable?
I understand your point - but it is extremely hard to see how this game could have been a serious depiction of war. Would it include horrible brutality by some of the soliders on your own side? Would it throw up the extreme moral quandraries surrounding civilian casualties and the invasion of Iraq itself? Would it even include civilians? Animals? Disease?
That's a question that should be asked of the Australian taxpayer. Perhaps research of this nature should not be publicly funded in that way.
Thanks, but most of us would probably rather have wi-fi as a thing that has been invented rather than living in your libertarian fantasy world. Particularly down here in our socialist utopia, where we are not so simpleminded as to think that anything involving the government is inherently wrong and bad.
Of course, Dell, MS, Nintendo and co are welcome to go and develop their own, non-infringing wireless technologies.
Regards,
Australia
I have also experienced the pain of stopping Civilization in order to reclaim my time/life. Civ 2 never leaves a man, not really.
I agree that those who are quick to dismiss the suggestion that games are potentially addictive have not really experienced the depths of what Civ, and certain other games, can do to you:
- playing for up to 24 hours straight
- not dressing, eating, washing
- avoiding going to the toilet as it is too difficult to tear oneself away even for 2 minutes
- becoming extremely dehydrated due to a failure to even register thirst
- avoiding other activities in order to continue playing
- orchestrating complex and deceptive plans to arrange life so that one can continue playing
- losing any sense of time whilst playing
- being unable to play for a short period of time without it turning into a very long period of time
- ignoring detrimental impact on personal and professional life caused by play time
My theory is that games are sufficiently more fun than the activities humans are evolved to enjoy that they have the potential to almost totally overthrow our free will (as the above list tends to suggest). Our pathetic little monkey brains are supposed to enjoy running around chasing things, bright colours, maybe music... when we concoct a machine that lets us temporarily believe that we rule the world/universe, or assume the identity of our heroes, or travel to amazing places in space or time, or perform feats which would ordinarily be far beyond our abilities, we go into pleasure overdrive and never want to leave.
And when those things are combined with a well balanced and subtle reward and punishment-based conditioning system (as most good games arguably do) we're helpless.
Laws which are not followed in a logical way are not laws. The whole point of following laws is to make people follow them even when that is not the most popular or expedient course - otherwise they would be unneccessary.
You are talking about mob rule. It is an objectively worse and less just way to run a society, and it should be condemned.
As far as I am concerned, Bethesda still hasn't released a final, stable build of the base game. Instead of wasting time with minor content additions, they should really sort out the fundamental stability problems the PC version of Fallout 3 continues to have.
In particular, I have personally seen severe stability issues with this game on three completely separate PCs (out of a total of three that I have tried it on, so 100%). Two of these were built in the last 12 months (one, sadly, for the express purpose of playing Fallout 3... a friend of mine is a tad obsessed with Oblivion and got rather overexcited about F3). All of them contain nothing but quality brand name parts etc, and all of them run other games well. Two of them even run Crysis well at very high detail.
Yet Fallout 3 three crashes on all of them - not just nice crashes, but serious, OS-killing crashes as well as crashes to desktop. On one, it's every hour or so. On another, when specific events happen (like opening VATS, shooting things... BAM back to desktop). On the third, it's around 5-15 minutes between crashes. On all three of them, it's basically not worth playing - you just know that the game is going to die on you unexpectedly sooner or later, which really breaks the immersion and doesn't exactly promote investment of time into playing it.
Over at the Bethesda forums, gangs of fanboys ramble on about how the game works well for them on their systems so therefore anyone who has issues must be experiencing a problem with their PC, not the game. But when you have multiple PCs, which otherwise run well in a variety of similar applications, and one particular game causes serious and replicable crashes, then there is something wrong with the game. And it's clear from the forums and from a quick Google search that there are many, many others who have similar issues.
So less DLC, more properly tested and polished games!!! Dammit Bethesda, I loved Oblivion and you've pretty much burnt through your credits with this farce.
Apparently you're not a console fanboy - this seems to be common parlance amongst PS3/X-Boxers.
The marketing drones clearly decided that "expansion pack" or "add on" or other "English" phrases were too "understandable" for "humans" and so began employing this crappy acronym instead. Another favourite of mine is "SKU" which apparently means "thing for sale" or "item for sale", although I am unsure of its precise meaning.
So get some DLC in your SKU, pronto.
Yes, I rather meant though that any movie "could be a western" if sufficiently reduced. Star Trek: two young cowboys from rival families are forced to work together to defeat the an evil new gang of bad guys who have come to town after their parents are unexpectedly killed.
On the other hand, you could take Star Wars and redo it as a Western without any loss of story.
Yeah! Like that John Wayne movie where the Sheriff has a giant, slow moving device which can destroy entire towns, and only throwing a rock off a horse from close range at a particular point on the surface of the device can destroy it! And wagons can travel faster than light, but this capability sometimes breaks down, leading to exciting chase sequences before the wagon zips away to an unknown location! And cowboys can use mysterious powers to control physical objects and influence other people!
Frankly, if Star Wars can be a Western I think anything can be a Western.
What aspects of Star Trek are so unique that you cannot draw similar parallels?
Saddam played chicken with the international community. The US didn't blink and deposed him.
Ah yes, that would explain why the US has intervened in the more obviously problematic cases of Zimbabwe and Sudan, and why you don't trade with a far more murderous and dangerous regime with nuclear weapons in China. Oh, wait.
Jesus you're really showing your lack of knowledge in this thread. Truly amazing. You seem to think it's OK for someone to invade another country and destroy an entire city using banned weapons on people. What a cunt.
Thank you, I thought I was going insane.
The twisted morality of some of the posts in this thread is truly scary.
1. We invade your country, you fight back, you are now a terrorist.
2. Anyone who fails to immediately betray you to our invading forces, whether civilian or soldier, man or woman, child or old person, is also a terrorist.
3. We are justified in killing anyone who is a terrorist, whether they engage us in direct combat or not.
4. In addition, because you are terorrists we are not bound by any laws of war in dealing with you, and may thus use any weapons and/or tactics we want.
5. ???
6. Profit!
So in your sick, sorry world, once we are at war we can kill all the civilians we want, and that is a good thing.
Dude, that's what war is. If you don't want war, then don't fight them. Don't sit there and pretend that war is a noble thing like a video game with so many rules. That only makes it more palatable to fight. I'd put this to you - if civilians understood that they would get killed in wars too, they might be a lot less likely to build, finance and cheer on the armies to fight them.
No, that's what a war crime is. Look it up some time.
No wonder the US doesn't want to sign on to the International Criminal Court...
As soon as you are a fighting force hiding amongst the populace you are no longer part of a legal army, you are a terrorist, and anyone assisting these people are also the same.
So if Russia or China invaded Arkansas or South Dakota or wherever you are from, you would line up in the rural plains with your .22 rifle and fight their Spec Ops forces in open warfare?
And if they invaded your home town, and you shot at them from a building, you would consider them justified in arbitrarily killing anyone in the general area, including old people, women and children?
War is messy and regrettable and sucks for all involved and we would have avoided Fallujah if we could have.
Yes, if only those civilians hadn't sat there 10,000 kilometres away doing absolutely nothing to harm the United States, you would have been able to avoid the heartache of having to massacre them in their own city following the fabrication of evidence about WMDs.
blame the property loss for burned houses on the insurgents, who made those family's houses a war zone
So Iraqis in Iraq fighting a foreign country which launched a premeditated war of aggression (for whatever reason) made Iraq a warzone?
remaining vulnerable civilians could have been escorted out by the insurgents, but were instead left as human shields by a cowardly enemy
IT WAS A FUCKING URBAN AREA. They lived there. America rocked up and blew it to hell.
Your morals are so inverted its scary.
The US gave ample time and warning for the population to leave safely before hand though. So everyone within the city after that point would have been considered a combatant.
A participant in a war doesn't get to define who is and is not a combatant. It is an objective question.
If I point a gun at you and say "do X now or I will consider you a threat to my safety" and I then shoot you when you refuse to comply, I am still a murderer.
And now to replace the word "Service"
7.3 Google reserves the right (but shall have no obligation) to pre-screen, review, flag, filter, modify, refuse or remove any or all Content from any of Google's products, software, services and web sites. For some of Google's products, software, services and web sites, Google may provide tools to filter out explicit sexual content. These tools include the SafeSearch preference settings (see google.com/help/customize.html#safe). In addition, there are commercially available services and software to limit access to material that you may find objectionable.
If that doesn't make it clear that Google only plans to filter Google services, I don't know what will.
Except that you're totally incorrect. Let's now replace the word Content (and replace "Services" again in that definition):
7.3 Google reserves the right ... to pre-screen, review, flag, filter, modify, refuse or remove any or all information (such as data files, written text, computer software, music, audio files or other sounds, photographs, videos or other images) which you may have access to as part of, or through your use of any of Google's products, software, services and web sites from any of Google's products, software, services and web sites.
The part in italics is critical. They are explicitly saying that it is not limited to Google's own content - it is anything you access using Google's "Services" which may be filtered. So long as you use Chrome to access it, they have the full range of rights they list (pre-screen, review, flag, filter, modify, refuse, remove).
Chrome is a 'product' and 'software', and therefore a 'Service'. The whole of the WWW is something you 'have access to as part of, or through your use of' Chrome. Google reserves the right to filter, monitor etc etc your use OF THE WWW WHEN YOU USE CHROME.
I have tried to set this out in more detail here.
Why, oh why, are people so hell bent on trusting massive corporations to just "do the right thing" and have their customers' best interests at heart when the evidence to the contrary is put in front of their faces over and over and over again?
I agree with the article. This is a clause which should raise a red flag. By using Chrome, you are agreeing to Google having the right to filter or modify the content you are accessing. "Flag" would tend to suggest they have the right to record the content you are accessing and report it to others.
I'm not saying they are doing these things now, but why would you agree to them ever having these rights?
They are doing it now, and it is a useful service. Apple recently started using Google's malware filtering system in Safari. Google is merely accurately describing how the service functions. Google scans content it deems "suspicious", flags it if it contains malware, warns other users.
If that's what they are doing, there is absolutely no reason why the EULA cannot be more specific and limit it to that.
At the moment they have unrestricted rights to filter and "flag" anything they want.
Just because it's boilerplate doesn't mean it's ineffective.
So "Services" includes Chrome itself (software/products) not just Google search etc. "Content" is:
Therefore, anything you access through Chrome is "Content".
So, by clause 7.3, you actually do agree that Google may, in its discretion,
anything that you access through Chrome. Nothing in 7.3 is limited to safesearch or other optional filtering services - the clause would be entirely compatible with Google silently monitoring and filtering what you can and cannot see on-line using Chrome on an entirely arbitrary basis.
I agree with the article. This is a clause which should raise a red flag. By using Chrome, you are agreeing to Google having the right to filter or modify the content you are accessing. "Flag" would tend to suggest they have the right to record the content you are accessing and report it to others.
I'm not saying they are doing these things now, but why would you agree to them ever having these rights?
I feel like I'm taking crazy pills.
Seriously, go and spec out a "maxed out" MacBook Pro in terms of these components and then go to Dell's website and build the exact same computer. Please. For your own sake.
I just did this and came out with a Macbook Pro for $6,300 (Australian) and a Dell for $4500.
It's the Applethromorphic principle: Apple is successful, so whatever Apple does is the only thing it could have done!
Apple could easily charge a lower margin and move into larger volume production.
Dell is coming at them from this direction, and doing it quite well. Dell has gone from massive production and sometimes dubious quality, to massive production and fairly good quality. I picked up an XPS laptop last year and I am extremely impressed with it in every respect. Apple will find itself in trouble if Dell manages to get to massive production and excellent quality, because suddenly there will be no reason at all (from a hardware perspective) for anyone to spend the extra $$$ on an Apple product.
GP is a moron. Syndicate and Magic Carpet are other epic Molyneux games. I thought the first Black & White was pretty amazing too.
Theme Park is testament to the fact that some games just work better in 2D... I STILL break it out and play it for hours from time to time. I just wish they would make a properly updated version that runs nicely in XP/Vista.
In fact, I wish Good Old Games would get hold of the Bullfrog catalogue - now THAT would be worth paying for.
Yes, but publishing on the Internet has an international scope.
Let's say I'm a minor British celebrity (*involuntary shudder*). Let's say you run www.ukrumours.com, a popular gossip site about celebrities in the UK. The site is hosted on a computer physically located in New York, and you yourself happen to be in the US. Nevertheless, many people in the UK read the site, some avidly. You post something on the site which is defamatory of me, as well as being false and unjustified. People in the UK read it, and it harms my reputation as a result.
I would be interested to know why anyone thinks that your personal geographical location in the above example makes a whit of difference as to whether you defamed me and caused me harm in the UK. This is the principle behind the "international scope" of defamation law in the UK (and Australia, and various other places). The Courts have, perhaps rightly, concluded that where a person is located when they put something on-line, or where a web server is located, are irrelevant questions in an age where anyone, anywhere can read any website they choose to.
The "international scope" of UK defamation law is not such that an American can sue another American for a publication taking place only in America, for instance.
I do not know where people get this from (I realise it is suggested in TFA/summary). A plaintiff will still incur legal costs, and in the UK will also have to pay the bulk of the defendant's costs if the claim is defeated. So a plaintiff bears a very great risk in bringing a claim.
If it's truly unmeritorious a half decent lawyer should be able to knock it on the head for you without the need for you to fly to the UK to appear.
I'm not a British citizen. I have no assets in the UK anybody could seize.
Why should I care if you sue me in a UK court? You could get a court order entitling you to a million pound. How would you collect? Ask me to send you a cheque from the US?
As I just posted here, a judgment definitely CAN be enforced in the US even though it was given in a foreign jurisdiction. You simply commence a proceeding in a US court in which you prove that you obtained judgment in the UK and ask the Court to give effect to the judgment in the US.
You may be able to convince the court of some policy basis upon which it should not give effect to a judgment. However, breaking another countries laws in another country is not generally a sound argument as to why a foreign judgment should not be enforced against you.