Aside from the victim's general idiocy, aside from the ominous implications of a government (even the Chinese government) interfering with the play of an online game, there's something to be said about the crux of the man's case, the fact that he worked for the items and required compensation at their loss.
It's a game.
He paid that much to play enough to amass those items? Good for him. But that's a dumb move, and no one should be protected for it. He put all his eggs in one basket, a basket that was, no less, in someone else's hands.
He got burned, but it was no one's fault but his own. The company's servers were vulnerable to intrusion? Fine. But that's no justification for compensating this guy for playing a game and losing, no matter how it came about.
I played a store demo of Rallisport once. Frankly, when a game's physics engine allows a car to stand vertically (as in, on its front bumper), ad infinitum, unless another car rams into it... well, you can see where I'm going.
For the record, I'd like to state that the above story bears little resemblance to what I actually submitted. For one, I also linked to a Gamespot article which I found to be at least as informative as the Reuters story.
And the submission is listed as "rejected" under my records.
I realized the same thing a while ago - that quality games were being released at such a pace, and with such lengths, that I might not live long enough to complete all the games I wanted to play.
Unlike the article's author, though, I didn't bemoan this fact and wish for shorter games - I reveled in it.
What is wrong with being able to play good games for every free second of your life and still leave many titles untouched? The only reason not to keep playing is if you're an insatiable completionist, in which case it's your own damn fault if you don't have time for anything.
...just a subjective limit of 'more than the average user.'
Mathematically speaking, if they always go after everyone above the average, it'll just continually lower what the average is in a never-ending cycle of bandwidth oppression.
And if they're not speaking mathematically - that is, if there's no literal weight behind the 'limit' - then you can't even maintain the illusion that they're trying to be fair; it's entirely arbitrary.
Whenever I hear about bandwidth caps, suddenly I don't feel so bad about my archaic dialup - in effect, I have roughly the same cap, but at least my ISP isn't trying (too hard) to keep me from it.
Almost every Xbox-related press release, interview, or other news item from Microsoft concludes with a statement to that effect. I can remember several that end with something along the lines of "...reaffirms the Xbox's position as number 2."
Like Linux, Nintendo competition is something that they like to write off as inferior without really publicly regarding.
"It's clear to me," said Senator Joe Lieberman (D-CT), "that the youths of America are having their impressionable minds twisted by this 'lowriding' game and being coerced by game makers into terrorizing our streets.
"This only supports my campaign platform for the banning of all video games," Lieberman continued.
Is it really a good idea to launch these things from the Middle East?
"Hey Jim, whaddya make of those things?" "Hmm. Are we at war with that country?" "I dunno." "Oh well. Maybe we should shoot 'em down, y'know, just to be safe? They look uh... dangerous."
My complaint is/was not the opening of tabs/windows, but rather, keeping track of them.
WIth two dozen tabs open, I can see what's finished loading and check each one in turn. With windows piled on top of other windows, I have to either cycle through them one at a time or venture random guesses.
I'm not slamming Safari. Actually, I've never used it. I'm just saying that tabs are, in fact, God's gift to web browsers.
"You accidentally point out the biggest flaw of tabs here: they're self-limiting. Depending on window size, you can only fit between four and eight tabs across the window before they have to be truncated. If you can't read the titles, the advantage of tabs evaporates."
I wouldn't say that.
I regularly have dozens of tabs up at once. They're remarkably good for checking multiple posts on a message board simultaneously. Back in the days of Netscape 4, more than four windows at a time was a pain...
Seeing the titles of the tabs, frankly, is irrelevant to me.
Simple question, hopefully less simple answer
on
Ask Kevin Mitnick
·
· Score: 1
Sounds like a superhero/villain origin story.
on
Visiting the Big Bang
·
· Score: 4, Funny
"...researchers in Long Island, NY are attempting to create the quark-gluon plasma that existed a trillionth of a second after the big bang, when the universe was just the size of a marble or grapefruit."
A freak accident in the laboratory led to the spill of this quark-gluon plasma on an unfortunate researcher, turning him into...
Quark-Gluon Man!
Faster than a speeding universal boundary
More powerful than a supernova
Able to create dimensions within a single bound
Slashdot Mirror
This is just ridiculous.
Aside from the victim's general idiocy, aside from the ominous implications of a government (even the Chinese government) interfering with the play of an online game, there's something to be said about the crux of the man's case, the fact that he worked for the items and required compensation at their loss.
It's a game.
He paid that much to play enough to amass those items? Good for him. But that's a dumb move, and no one should be protected for it. He put all his eggs in one basket, a basket that was, no less, in someone else's hands.
He got burned, but it was no one's fault but his own. The company's servers were vulnerable to intrusion? Fine. But that's no justification for compensating this guy for playing a game and losing, no matter how it came about.
I think the real question is, how long before the N-Gage appears as a type of exchangeable currency?
Maybe the catastrophic memory glitches make it seem more familiar to them.
For the record, I'd like to state that the above story bears little resemblance to what I actually submitted. For one, I also linked to a Gamespot article which I found to be at least as informative as the Reuters story.
And the submission is listed as "rejected" under my records.
I realized the same thing a while ago - that quality games were being released at such a pace, and with such lengths, that I might not live long enough to complete all the games I wanted to play.
Unlike the article's author, though, I didn't bemoan this fact and wish for shorter games - I reveled in it.
What is wrong with being able to play good games for every free second of your life and still leave many titles untouched? The only reason not to keep playing is if you're an insatiable completionist, in which case it's your own damn fault if you don't have time for anything.
I thought all they did was issue press releases about, and delay, Half-Life 2. Didn't know they actually made stuff there.
On the other hand though, if I had broadband, my post might not have been so repetitive of the lowering-average point.
Mathematically speaking, if they always go after everyone above the average, it'll just continually lower what the average is in a never-ending cycle of bandwidth oppression.
And if they're not speaking mathematically - that is, if there's no literal weight behind the 'limit' - then you can't even maintain the illusion that they're trying to be fair; it's entirely arbitrary.
Whenever I hear about bandwidth caps, suddenly I don't feel so bad about my archaic dialup - in effect, I have roughly the same cap, but at least my ISP isn't trying (too hard) to keep me from it.
Almost every Xbox-related press release, interview, or other news item from Microsoft concludes with a statement to that effect. I can remember several that end with something along the lines of "...reaffirms the Xbox's position as number 2."
Like Linux, Nintendo competition is something that they like to write off as inferior without really publicly regarding.
Can you invoke disasters on the unsuspecting students, like RIAA subpoena-frenzy, and John Belushi?
The only real question left is how many people at Nokia are yelling obscenities because of this.
(looks at a map)
Okay, so I was tired.
Is it really a good idea to launch these things from the Middle East?
"Hey Jim, whaddya make of those things?"
"Hmm. Are we at war with that country?"
"I dunno."
"Oh well. Maybe we should shoot 'em down, y'know, just to be safe? They look uh... dangerous."
"[I]t's minus Raquel Welch and the rest of the crew and therefore it's a promising start."
If this post doesn't get modded up, I'm suing.
Frankly, if you think that your mention of Safari immediately negates everything I've said, you can go have a seizure.
WIth two dozen tabs open, I can see what's finished loading and check each one in turn. With windows piled on top of other windows, I have to either cycle through them one at a time or venture random guesses.
I'm not slamming Safari. Actually, I've never used it. I'm just saying that tabs are, in fact, God's gift to web browsers.
I wouldn't say that.
I regularly have dozens of tabs up at once. They're remarkably good for checking multiple posts on a message board simultaneously. Back in the days of Netscape 4, more than four windows at a time was a pain...
Seeing the titles of the tabs, frankly, is irrelevant to me.
Palladium?
See?
A freak accident in the laboratory led to the spill of this quark-gluon plasma on an unfortunate researcher, turning him into...
Quark-Gluon Man!
Faster than a speeding universal boundary
More powerful than a supernova
Able to create dimensions within a single bound
I mean, can you imagine what would have happened if Anne Frank's diaries had gotten out before Normandy?