It's a private game for which you pay a fee to play. They set the rules. They could turn off the add-on API tomorrow if they wanted to. It's their game.
Oh, and MS is under no legal obligation to provide an SDK or API, just so you know.
Although your analogy is flawed in hundreds of ways (apples, meet oranges), the short answer is that until the court system says otherwise, software EULAs are valid and they can assert whatever rights are in the contract you agreed to.
As for stupid... not for them it's not. They want to control the "in game" experience. It's their game. Don't like it... don't play it.
I think this is a mistake caused by Blizzard's overzealous legal team. I think, for some reason, Blizzard is terrified at the idea of anyone besides them making money on anything related to their game. I'm not sure why they're banning donation requests ingame but not out-of-game - I think they're just confused. However, they've killed off a good number of UI mods thanks to this, and I think ultimately this is going to hurt them quite a bit.
I'm not going to deny that this will suck for you, and I do sympathize but honestly... you're the outlier in the dataset. I would say there are only a handful of people in the world who derive their entire income from writing a lua plug-in for a MMORPG.
The question you ask regarding why they would ban in-game donation requests is fairly simple - they don't want nagware running inside their game. Companies like Blizzard are very conscious of the "in-game experience" and want to control that as much as possible.
You may be somewhat correct that this is also driven by their legal dept., but not for the reason you suggest. They may be concerned about liability issues, or labor/compensation issues. IANAL nor pretend to be, so even that may be way off as well.
As for it "hurting them", unfortunately I think you over-estimate how many of their 12 million users even use plug-ins, never mind base their continued patronage on their availability. I would be willing to bet that if they turned off the add-on API tomorrow, they'd lose less than 1% of their player base. There would be some grumbling from another 1% - 2%, but in the end it really wouldn't matter much.
CVV numbers. Which VISA/MC tell you as a merchant you are never ever to store (it's only supposed to be sent to the payment/verification gateway in real time with the transaction).
The merchants involved should have their agreements revoked.
I'm of the opinion that if we had more discipline and less coddling when it came to kids, our education system might not be such a disaster (among other things).
I fondly remember living in fear of the paddle that hung on the principle's wall in grades 1 - 6.
You know what's really funny, is that I actually know this. I constantly screw it up. It;s one of the few parts of the english language that my brain just simply can't retain for some reason.
Call the grammar police!
Good thing I'm a senior software engineer and my pay isn't affected by minor grammatical errors in forums on the interwebs. (See what I did there?)
Sorry? Since when does paying attention, being educated and doing well in life garner negative points? It's working out pretty well for myself and my peers.
Oh wait... you must be one of those folks who thinks discipline is bad and that we shouldn't hurt children's feelings with silly things like tests and what not.
Let your kid know that I'll have a big mac meal, to go, please.
If they arent disturbing anyone, why is it a problem? It only is going to effect their own grades..
Oh, I whole heatedly disagree.
Having spent my Junior and Senior year in high school sitting in classes with slack-jawed morons who could barely read at an 8th grade level and whose futures generally involved the question "do you want fries with that?", I can tell you it does more than effect their own grades. The curriculum / classroom changes to fit the lowest common denominator in our public school system.
So instead of kids who want to be there actually being able to learn something, you have an enormous amount of resources / class time going to the morons.
While your grades may not be effected, what you actually learn and therefore your purpose for being there, is.
I gave up on actually showing up for my senior English class when it was the third year out of four that involved reading *the same book* (Fahrenheit 451, which is exceptionally funny since I read it on my own in 7th or 8th grade).
It goes from 10 miles SE of Boulder arcing up to Northglen then back down to the airport. From there it loops down to the southern outskirts of what could be considered the Denver metro then back up around to I70 on the west side.
I fully get the "let the rich people have their own road" reference except... it doesn't go near them, and they're not using it either.
Nor can you use it to go to the "fancy ski resorts". I go snowboarding almost every weekend, and unless I lived on the southern outskirts of Denver and could use the SW loop, it isn't of any use for that. You have to go into the middle via I76/rt36/I25 and catch I70 heading west.
I do use it to go to the airport if I want to get there in a hurry, mainly because that's not an everyday trip and I can somewhat rationalize it that way.
Oh, and if I'm running late for a meeting. THAT is worth $3.
The OP fails to mention some things about the C470/NW Parkway here in Denver
It's pretty much the most expensive per-mile toll road in the country. And they keep raising the rates on it every 6 months.
I could save about 5 - 8 minutes out of my 35 min commute if I used it. However, that would cost me $120 per month. $3 for 8 miles of road (each way) in my case. And that's *one* toll booth.
And the reason those 8 miles would save me that much time is that no one uses the thing because of the ever-increasing tolls.
I am being completely serious when I say that at 5pm (rush hour) on the northern 1/4 of the toll road, you would be hard pressed to encounter more than 6 - 7 other cars while on it. Meanwhile, the surface roads that run near it are packed with cars.
And don't get me started about how the toll road always seems to be plowed when it snows while the surface streets aren't.
It's not that I can't afford $120/mo... I just refuse. It's the principle of the thing. I already pay for roads; it's called paying my taxes. Cut my taxes by $120/mo and I'll gladly pay for that road rather than the ones I'm using now.
This is called, "The Law" (though it does vary by State)
In most States, a previous employer can only state that the dates of employment and position are correct, and whether or not they would rehire the person.
Even without a restrictive State law, most companies will still do this as a matter of policy as giving out false or partial details could land then in a world of hurt (lawsuits).
I read the actual summary of the lawsuit, not the linked page (which I've now read).
They're linking directly to the (unrestricted).mp3 files, which is interesting, actually.
IMHO, it's being a scumbag, piggy-backing off someone else's server to make money... but it will be interesting to see what the judge rules.
Of course, those sites actually distributing the mp3s should be denying requests that don't come from their own pages or building in some other mechanism to prevent the direct linking. That would fix that little problem.
Just because someone gives you a copy of their copyrighted work doesn't mean you get to copy and redistribute it.
The owner of the copyrighted work explicitly grants any and all rights regardless of how much they are charging for a copy of the work (even when they are giving it away for free).
"The thing is, people won't pay $3 for access to media they don't physically control."
Erm, they have for years. And continue to do so... it's called "Renting a movie".
I bought an AppleTV last year and we honestly love it. It fits our movie viewing habits; we want to watch a movie. Right now. We didn't know what we wanted to watch right now 3 days ago (we had netflix... we always ended up not being in the mood for the whatever it was we currently had). The "HD" rentals look fabulous on our 42" LCD HD.::shrug:: different strokes for different folks
I guess it's too much to ask that you click on the link in the story that takes you to Sun's blog where they explain that Linux and Solaris versions are being released?
you just want to bully other people out of their bandwidth so you get more.
Um, what?
How can I "bully" anyone? My modem is capped at the speeds Comcast sold me, no more, no less. In addition, I have a monthly transfer limit.
If Comcrap can't provide what they are selling... they shouldn't be selling it. Oh, but wait! That's not their fault, it's those users! They're actually trying to use what was sold to them.
I'm not a big bit torrent guy, except for WoW and other legitimate torrents. But the thought that people are being told that they can't use bit torrent for any technical reason is silly - it's the ISPs over-selling and under-delivering, plain and simple.
Perhaps if enough people aren't willing to purchase your game at full retail, your retail price is too high for the product you are selling?
There's a reason GameStop, etc are basically pawn shops these days - they figured out that there's a whole lot more people willing to buy the games at roughly 30% off retail.
But no, your answer is to try and kill secondary sales.
I honestly hope you do, in some ways, as then you'll see that your logic is equally as flawed as the RIAA's and that each "secondary sale" or rental isn't someone who would have purchased it at full retail otherwise.
CO has plenty of roads that are 75mph, and we don't get any points for up to 5mph over... and even then I don't know any cop that would bother to pull you for 80 in a 75.
We could argue the merits of any metered resource you purchase being analogous.
But forget about water.
The point I was trying to make was one of responsibility.
And I'm not saying that the '"surprise overage charge" solution is the only other choice besides leaving things alone'... but letting people be ignorant and damaging without any repercussions is... well, wrong. I would be just as happy if instead of an overcharge, they simply cut someone off.
I may be somewhat biased because I honestly feel that this is a problem in general with our society at the moment; no one is responsible for anything they do - it's always someone else's fault or someone else's job to fix the problem. But in this case, it's not only that, but their actions affect me directly monetarily (in regard to higher costs for services) as well as in regard to the amount of time I have to spend filtering junk out of my mail.
My employer supplies us with Dell laptops as work machines, and mine zaps the hell out of me all the time. It's not any worse than your average static zap after shuffling your feet across a carpet, but still.. my personal HP Pavilion laptop hasn't ever done this to me.
So in the end, you would rather pay more to offset bad users' actions? Because that's what you're advocating. Someone is going to pay.
In every other facet of life, you pay for your own ignorance.
- If I don't maintain my car properly, it breaks, I pay. - If I don't maintain the HVAC in my house, it breaks, I pay. - If I don't maintain the plumbing in my house (i.e. shutting off outdoor faucets before they freeze), it breaks, I pay. - Etc, etc, etc.
Personal experience: I received a water bill a couple years ago that was significantly more than what it usually was / should have been. The meter wasn't lying. I had a badly leaking valve on an outdoor faucet that I didn't notice. The water company didn't charge my neighbors more because my house had a problem - they charged me for the water I used and if I hadn't replaced the valve, they would have continued to charge me for that water. Now, I was completely comfortable doing the work myself, but if I hadn't been (which many people aren't), I would have needed to call a plumber and paid him to fix it. I also now make sure that I check my outdoor faucets regularly.
Why should computer/internet use be any different? In all the above cases, you need to either A) do the research yourself and do the upkeep yourself, or B) pay someone with that skillset/knowledge to do it for you.
I'm really not trying to be an 'elitest' here, it just makes common sense that you should be just as responsible for your computer being maintained as you are with any other item you own that requires some upkeep.
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah ... illegal, not so much.
It's a private game for which you pay a fee to play. They set the rules. They could turn off the add-on API tomorrow if they wanted to. It's their game.
Oh, and MS is under no legal obligation to provide an SDK or API, just so you know.
Although your analogy is flawed in hundreds of ways (apples, meet oranges), the short answer is that until the court system says otherwise, software EULAs are valid and they can assert whatever rights are in the contract you agreed to.
As for stupid ... not for them it's not. They want to control the "in game" experience. It's their game. Don't like it ... don't play it.
- Roach
I think this is a mistake caused by Blizzard's overzealous legal team. I think, for some reason, Blizzard is terrified at the idea of anyone besides them making money on anything related to their game. I'm not sure why they're banning donation requests ingame but not out-of-game - I think they're just confused. However, they've killed off a good number of UI mods thanks to this, and I think ultimately this is going to hurt them quite a bit.
I'm not going to deny that this will suck for you, and I do sympathize but honestly ... you're the outlier in the dataset. I would say there are only a handful of people in the world who derive their entire income from writing a lua plug-in for a MMORPG.
The question you ask regarding why they would ban in-game donation requests is fairly simple - they don't want nagware running inside their game. Companies like Blizzard are very conscious of the "in-game experience" and want to control that as much as possible.
You may be somewhat correct that this is also driven by their legal dept., but not for the reason you suggest. They may be concerned about liability issues, or labor/compensation issues. IANAL nor pretend to be, so even that may be way off as well.
As for it "hurting them", unfortunately I think you over-estimate how many of their 12 million users even use plug-ins, never mind base their continued patronage on their availability. I would be willing to bet that if they turned off the add-on API tomorrow, they'd lose less than 1% of their player base. There would be some grumbling from another 1% - 2%, but in the end it really wouldn't matter much.
- Roach
CVV numbers. Which VISA/MC tell you as a merchant you are never ever to store (it's only supposed to be sent to the payment/verification gateway in real time with the transaction).
The merchants involved should have their agreements revoked.
- Roach
Last video on the page. And it IS impressive.
I don't know if that is a "liberal" thing ... wasn't it Bush that came up with "no child left behind" ?
(Disclaimer: I'm not a "liberal" or a "conservative", I have views/opinions that cross both boundaries)
Sorry, my idealism was showing.
I'm of the opinion that if we had more discipline and less coddling when it came to kids, our education system might not be such a disaster (among other things).
I fondly remember living in fear of the paddle that hung on the principle's wall in grades 1 - 6.
You know what's really funny, is that I actually know this. I constantly screw it up. It;s one of the few parts of the english language that my brain just simply can't retain for some reason.
Call the grammar police!
Good thing I'm a senior software engineer and my pay isn't affected by minor grammatical errors in forums on the interwebs. (See what I did there?)
Sorry? Since when does paying attention, being educated and doing well in life garner negative points? It's working out pretty well for myself and my peers.
Oh wait ... you must be one of those folks who thinks discipline is bad and that we shouldn't hurt children's feelings with silly things like tests and what not.
Let your kid know that I'll have a big mac meal, to go, please.
If they arent disturbing anyone, why is it a problem? It only is going to effect their own grades. .
Oh, I whole heatedly disagree.
Having spent my Junior and Senior year in high school sitting in classes with slack-jawed morons who could barely read at an 8th grade level and whose futures generally involved the question "do you want fries with that?", I can tell you it does more than effect their own grades. The curriculum / classroom changes to fit the lowest common denominator in our public school system.
So instead of kids who want to be there actually being able to learn something, you have an enormous amount of resources / class time going to the morons.
While your grades may not be effected, what you actually learn and therefore your purpose for being there, is.
I gave up on actually showing up for my senior English class when it was the third year out of four that involved reading *the same book* (Fahrenheit 451, which is exceptionally funny since I read it on my own in 7th or 8th grade).
Erm, but it doesn't.
It goes from 10 miles SE of Boulder arcing up to Northglen then back down to the airport. From there it loops down to the southern outskirts of what could be considered the Denver metro then back up around to I70 on the west side.
I fully get the "let the rich people have their own road" reference except ... it doesn't go near them, and they're not using it either.
Nor can you use it to go to the "fancy ski resorts". I go snowboarding almost every weekend, and unless I lived on the southern outskirts of Denver and could use the SW loop, it isn't of any use for that. You have to go into the middle via I76/rt36/I25 and catch I70 heading west.
I do use it to go to the airport if I want to get there in a hurry, mainly because that's not an everyday trip and I can somewhat rationalize it that way.
Oh, and if I'm running late for a meeting. THAT is worth $3.
The OP fails to mention some things about the C470/NW Parkway here in Denver
It's pretty much the most expensive per-mile toll road in the country. And they keep raising the rates on it every 6 months.
I could save about 5 - 8 minutes out of my 35 min commute if I used it. However, that would cost me $120 per month. $3 for 8 miles of road (each way) in my case. And that's *one* toll booth.
And the reason those 8 miles would save me that much time is that no one uses the thing because of the ever-increasing tolls.
I am being completely serious when I say that at 5pm (rush hour) on the northern 1/4 of the toll road, you would be hard pressed to encounter more than 6 - 7 other cars while on it. Meanwhile, the surface roads that run near it are packed with cars.
And don't get me started about how the toll road always seems to be plowed when it snows while the surface streets aren't.
It's not that I can't afford $120/mo ... I just refuse. It's the principle of the thing. I already pay for roads; it's called paying my taxes. Cut my taxes by $120/mo and I'll gladly pay for that road rather than the ones I'm using now.
This is called, "The Law" (though it does vary by State)
In most States, a previous employer can only state that the dates of employment and position are correct, and whether or not they would rehire the person.
Even without a restrictive State law, most companies will still do this as a matter of policy as giving out false or partial details could land then in a world of hurt (lawsuits).
I read the actual summary of the lawsuit, not the linked page (which I've now read).
They're linking directly to the (unrestricted) .mp3 files, which is interesting, actually.
IMHO, it's being a scumbag, piggy-backing off someone else's server to make money ... but it will be interesting to see what the judge rules.
Of course, those sites actually distributing the mp3s should be denying requests that don't come from their own pages or building in some other mechanism to prevent the direct linking. That would fix that little problem.
Just because someone gives you a copy of their copyrighted work doesn't mean you get to copy and redistribute it.
The owner of the copyrighted work explicitly grants any and all rights regardless of how much they are charging for a copy of the work (even when they are giving it away for free).
- Roach
what's a reasonable assumption?
That copyright law still applies? That would be my "reasonable" assumption.
Unless they grant you the right to re-distribute their copyrighted works, you don't have one.
There is no implicit right to re-distribute even if you are given a copy of something for free.
"The thing is, people won't pay $3 for access to media they don't physically control."
Erm, they have for years. And continue to do so ... it's called "Renting a movie".
I bought an AppleTV last year and we honestly love it. It fits our movie viewing habits; we want to watch a movie. Right now. We didn't know what we wanted to watch right now 3 days ago (we had netflix ... we always ended up not being in the mood for the whatever it was we currently had). The "HD" rentals look fabulous on our 42" LCD HD. ::shrug:: different strokes for different folks
- Roach
I guess it's too much to ask that you click on the link in the story that takes you to Sun's blog where they explain that Linux and Solaris versions are being released?
you just want to bully other people out of their bandwidth so you get more.
Um, what?
How can I "bully" anyone? My modem is capped at the speeds Comcast sold me, no more, no less. In addition, I have a monthly transfer limit.
If Comcrap can't provide what they are selling ... they shouldn't be selling it. Oh, but wait! That's not their fault, it's those users! They're actually trying to use what was sold to them.
I'm not a big bit torrent guy, except for WoW and other legitimate torrents. But the thought that people are being told that they can't use bit torrent for any technical reason is silly - it's the ISPs over-selling and under-delivering, plain and simple.
Perhaps if enough people aren't willing to purchase your game at full retail, your retail price is too high for the product you are selling?
There's a reason GameStop, etc are basically pawn shops these days - they figured out that there's a whole lot more people willing to buy the games at roughly 30% off retail.
But no, your answer is to try and kill secondary sales.
I honestly hope you do, in some ways, as then you'll see that your logic is equally as flawed as the RIAA's and that each "secondary sale" or rental isn't someone who would have purchased it at full retail otherwise.
(?:<thing>foo)
Where you can then access the matched substring ("foo" in this case) by the tag/label "thing" (access syntax depends on language).
It's pretty spiffy if you need order independent matching.
My first car was ... a 1978 Chevette. (And no, it wasn't even *close* to new, so you don't need to get off my lawn).
Simple really ... it wouldn't do 80mph if it was going downhill with a tailwind.
Never did I contemplate trying to do donuts, burnouts, or high speed. There simply wasn't a chance of any of those things being possible.
(We saved that for my friend with the vintage GTO. )
CO has plenty of roads that are 75mph, and we don't get any points for up to 5mph over ... and even then I don't know any cop that would bother to pull you for 80 in a 75.
We could argue the merits of any metered resource you purchase being analogous.
But forget about water.
The point I was trying to make was one of responsibility.
And I'm not saying that the '"surprise overage charge" solution is the only other choice besides leaving things alone'
I may be somewhat biased because I honestly feel that this is a problem in general with our society at the moment; no one is responsible for anything they do - it's always someone else's fault or someone else's job to fix the problem. But in this case, it's not only that, but their actions affect me directly monetarily (in regard to higher costs for services) as well as in regard to the amount of time I have to spend filtering junk out of my mail.
- Roach
My employer supplies us with Dell laptops as work machines, and mine zaps the hell out of me all the time. It's not any worse than your average static zap after shuffling your feet across a carpet, but still
- Roach
So in the end, you would rather pay more to offset bad users' actions? Because that's what you're advocating. Someone is going to pay.
In every other facet of life, you pay for your own ignorance.
- If I don't maintain my car properly, it breaks, I pay.
- If I don't maintain the HVAC in my house, it breaks, I pay.
- If I don't maintain the plumbing in my house (i.e. shutting off outdoor faucets before they freeze), it breaks, I pay.
- Etc, etc, etc.
Personal experience: I received a water bill a couple years ago that was significantly more than what it usually was / should have been. The meter wasn't lying. I had a badly leaking valve on an outdoor faucet that I didn't notice. The water company didn't charge my neighbors more because my house had a problem - they charged me for the water I used and if I hadn't replaced the valve, they would have continued to charge me for that water. Now, I was completely comfortable doing the work myself, but if I hadn't been (which many people aren't), I would have needed to call a plumber and paid him to fix it. I also now make sure that I check my outdoor faucets regularly.
Why should computer/internet use be any different? In all the above cases, you need to either A) do the research yourself and do the upkeep yourself, or B) pay someone with that skillset/knowledge to do it for you.
I'm really not trying to be an 'elitest' here, it just makes common sense that you should be just as responsible for your computer being maintained as you are with any other item you own that requires some upkeep.
- Roach