The definition of "clean" board is different nowdays. Basically, what you want now is a board that only has onboard audio and possibly lan. Onboard video is evil for the same reasons it has always been evil
"One problem is that the associated "value" of items often leads to anti-social behavior and the breakdown of in-game ettiquete. For example, if a powerful magic staff drops in a group, a warrior might roll on it (distribution of item drops are handled by random number "rolls"), despite the fact that the staff might be much better used by a wizard type character. This can lead to the breakdown of friendships and general ettiquete in the game."
The perceived value is there among groups who do not exchange real cash for virtual items as well. The value comes from the desire for more gold. The gold exchange is the result of that same desire, not the cause of it.
"For example, in EverQuest, known eBay farmers would frequently attract the attention of huge packs of monsters, far beyond the ability of any group to deal with, run up to a competing group, and use the "feign death" ability. This would cause all the monsters to lose their focus on the eBay farmer and instead turn towards the nearest target: you."
And for every eBay farmer there are 10,000 guys who do that just to be pricks. The problem is the way mobs agro in EQ and the Feign Death ability, if someone can do that, it is a bug. In wow mobs will generally ignore other non-grouped players (unless attacked) while they return to the area where they spawned after combat ends.
"While instanced content really alleviates this problem a lot, you still have the problem of pickup groups. To some extent, almost everyone is forced to group with strangers at one point or another. Grouping with a stranger who has relied on items they would never be able to naturally obtain, or who purchased a character can often result in hours of frustration as you deal with warriors who don't know how to hold the monster's attention, priests who don't heal, and wizards who are inept at dealing damage. It's just not a fun situation overall."
And this is different from your average idiot... how? Maybe 1 out of 100 players actually can play their character decently. In even the best groups there is usually at least one idiot who doesn't play their character right. Either they have been pl'd up, or they play two accounts to get double pts/loot but can't really keep up with it, or they are using a friends account, or most commonly, they just aren't any good at the game.
Part of the problem may be that you come from an EQ background. The real problem is that EQ has been hacked and botted all to hell and people have been doing it for years. By the time WoW reaches the point EQ has, the game will be at the end of its reasonable life anyway and it will be time to move on to the next good game.
"While the player may not have a legal leg to stand on, they can make problems for Blizzard both legally and in terms of public relations."
You have to agree not to hold Blizzard liable for this every other day if you play WoW. So your right, they wouldn't have a legal leg to stand on. If someone wanted to create a PR nightmare but have no legal leg to stand on they can do that now without virtual gold. In fact, I would argue that someone who spent 50 hours earning an item and then losing it to a time warp is more likely to raise a stink than someone who spent $50 on one.
"On top of all that, since the system is being used to generate the gold that people are selling, would blizzard be required to file any REAL financial documents? This is different from eBay where people list items bought or created somewhere else, these sold items are created in game."
I am not sure I really follow your logic here. The gold can be likened to say magic the gathering trading cards (or pokemon or whatever). The value of the cards is only as a collectable. Wizards of the coast (the makers of magic) are only responsible for their profits on producing and selling the cards, not for the collectable value of the cards among traders.
There could be a good argument that those who are profiting on selling/exchanging the gold should be paying taxes on those gains, but I imagine how the collectables are valued for inventory is already covered under tax law.
"1 : to get into one's hands or into one's possession, power, or control: as a : to seize or capture physically b : to get possession of (as fish or game) by killing or capturing c (1) : to move against (as an opponent's piece in chess) and remove from play (2) : to win in a card game d : to acquire by eminent domain"
In every definition of take there is either a direct requirement or implied requirement that in order to "take" you have to "take away" something. Cut-paste takes away the origninal, copy-paste does not. Therefore to copy is NEVER to take.
Also, the COPYRIGHT belongs to developers NOT the code. A copy of the code is just a representation of an idea. Ideas are owned by nobody (or everyone). Copyright is a legal grant of certain limited rights to control how an idea is used in exchange for revealing the idea to others. You can take source code (perhaps there is only one copy and it resides on a floppy) but the only 'property' is the copyright on the source code, not the code itself. He did not steal your copyright, he infringed upon the privilages it grants you.
"To steal doesn't imply that the victim no longer has something. It states that something was taken from them."
In order to 'take' something, the victim can no longer have it.
"Bah! it's Saturday and I'm arguing semantics on Slashdot."
Tell me about it. *sighs* I wouldn't argue it if I did not think it was an important semantic though. If you forget or do not fully understand the difference between the idea (copyrighted material) and the property (the copyright granted) suddenly a lot of 'protections', 'rights', and 'enforcement' become reasonable.
And each of those things unjustly hinders the progress of mankind.
Is someone really glorifying the post it note? I am sure the inventor made a pile on them but post it notes are evil.
They get lost in the shuffle and misplaced. Those who use them lack accountability. Perhaps post it notes plugged a hole for a short time but now the world would be better without them.
In order for theft to occur he would have to take something away. He didn't steal anything. He COPIED code from one open sourced GPL project and put it into his closed project. The PearPC project still has all of their code.
computer code is written to be interpreted by computers. Law is written to be interpreted by English speaking human beings. Almost all legal terminology can be expressed in dictionary English and there is no particular validity to the dictionary English definitions of words being usurped by legal dictionaries.
Computer code exists because computers are not able to interpret instructions written in English. Humans are.
99% of legalese is not precision at all. 99% of legalese is nonsense jargon that could be expressed using Dictionary English with the same degree of accuracy.
"What you're asking for is kind of like asking for simpler programming languages"
Not at all, programming requires special languages because it it intended for a machine. Law can be written in dictionary English because it is intended for regular English speaking people. As long as legal dictionaries exist lawyers are simply artificially supporting their profession.
I agree in principle. I would even support the effort AFTER the corporate sponsorship of congressmen has been banned permanently. Until then, I want judges who are appointed for life around to be able to overturn their legislation.
Only if you consider that the politicians themselves are lawyers. I certainly hope you aren't under the illusion that the US Government has anywhere near the influence and power of large corporations.
You have to pay for the write to utilize the source in your applications. You make that payment in the form of source code. Simply because there are other usages that do not cost anything does not make that any less true.
The reason you are tainted from looking at shared source is the two headed. First the license itself prevents you from utilizing the knowledge with contract law. Second, everything there is software patented.
Copyright does not require a cleanroom implementation. Patents do. Open source code is not patented.
"Think about it. You are a parent. You have the right to know where your kids are."
Actually I suspect a parent successfully being a protective as they would like to be would result in a significant maturity impairment in the child.
Your idea really is not a bad one. Although the implant could be removed when the child is of legal age to own personal property (16 in most states, 13 in some) and getting access to the data should require a warrant for police and should not be directly accessible by parents.
"Sex offenders have no right to privacy. That's the group this law is intended for. Whether you agree with that is another argument entirely."
No actually that is the issue at hand. Sex offenders do have a right to privacy. Remember that "molesting children" is only ONE thing labeled as a sex crime. I have a friend who is tagged for life and lost his professional license because he got friendly with a 17yr old girl. Remember that this is FAR more common than child molestation.
Now you would have him be tracked and questioned if he should walk near a school, library, or daycare for the rest of his life? All because of a piece of jailbait?
"you're just not allowed to link the code into your application"
I wish people would stop repeating this. Some anal arse came up with this concept a long time ago and it did not make anymore sense then than it did now. The concept of a GPL violation during compilation or runtime is utterly ridiculous. If you allow that road of thought then running ANY software under the Linux kernel would be a GPL violation.
The exception in the Kernel GPL version is not there because it is needed, it is there to silence idiots who raise the question.
f) People would like to have a license under different terms.
The ultimate aim of the GPL is to destroy the business model of writing software once and then generating sales from artificial limitations on copying. The GPL aims to force programmers to continue working in order to keep getting paid. One way to do this is to code under contract.
What do you think is better for us all, programmers writing one piece of code and then settling in as rich fat cats, or programmers writing code for 50yrs and then retiring?
"All true. But if "intelligent design" consists of the belief that the Universe was designed and/or created by a supreme being of some sort... which religion does that favor? Many, probably most, if not all, religions have creation mythology, and creation myths tend to involve supreme beings."
My post was in direct response to the parents claim that seperation of church and state is not present in any of our nations legal documentation.
The religions favored are those that believe in a supreme being. Many believe that all religions are merely tall tales and do not want their children taught they are anything else. But that is beside the point. The point here is not seperation of church and state.
The point here is that the school is creating a policy to lie to students in science class. It is bad enough that they do this is in American History. Intelligent design has no evidence to support it, therefore Intelligent design would rate as a hypothesis.
However, since there is plenty of evidence to support the theory of evolution; ID is not even an EDUCATED guess.
Remember, ID is NOT creation. ID is an alternative solution to evolution. Evolution has nothing to do with the origin of the universe. Evolution is how things progress AFTER creation. If you believe in natural selection, you can not believe in ID. The two can not be reconciled. If you believe that simple pieces can interact in complex ways (i.e. ants, bees, bird flocking, the rat neurons they slapped in a peatrie dish that figured out how to fly a flight simulator). You can not believe in ID, again, because the two are contrary to one another.
The ONLY support for ID is the logic premise (as opposed to physical evidence) that simple pieces can not interact in ways that result in complex behavior.
Soooo what about neural nets? We CREATE them, but only as far as putting lots of simple pieces together and then feeding them input. They begin to form chains and recognize voice patterns on their own without a guiding program. That is an example of evolution with a creator. ID argues that this concept is impossible, that a complex behavior like voice recognition would require intelligence guiding each and every little component. Every chain in the neural net would have to be crafted by hand... but... they arent.
I believe a lot of people still have this 1950's concept that Evolution is contrary to creation and that simply is not true.
Slashdot Mirror
The definition of "clean" board is different nowdays. Basically, what you want now is a board that only has onboard audio and possibly lan. Onboard video is evil for the same reasons it has always been evil
"One problem is that the associated "value" of items often leads to anti-social behavior and the breakdown of in-game ettiquete. For example, if a powerful magic staff drops in a group, a warrior might roll on it (distribution of item drops are handled by random number "rolls"), despite the fact that the staff might be much better used by a wizard type character. This can lead to the breakdown of friendships and general ettiquete in the game."
The perceived value is there among groups who do not exchange real cash for virtual items as well. The value comes from the desire for more gold. The gold exchange is the result of that same desire, not the cause of it.
"For example, in EverQuest, known eBay farmers would frequently attract the attention of huge packs of monsters, far beyond the ability of any group to deal with, run up to a competing group, and use the "feign death" ability. This would cause all the monsters to lose their focus on the eBay farmer and instead turn towards the nearest target: you."
And for every eBay farmer there are 10,000 guys who do that just to be pricks. The problem is the way mobs agro in EQ and the Feign Death ability, if someone can do that, it is a bug. In wow mobs will generally ignore other non-grouped players (unless attacked) while they return to the area where they spawned after combat ends.
"While instanced content really alleviates this problem a lot, you still have the problem of pickup groups. To some extent, almost everyone is forced to group with strangers at one point or another. Grouping with a stranger who has relied on items they would never be able to naturally obtain, or who purchased a character can often result in hours of frustration as you deal with warriors who don't know how to hold the monster's attention, priests who don't heal, and wizards who are inept at dealing damage. It's just not a fun situation overall."
And this is different from your average idiot... how? Maybe 1 out of 100 players actually can play their character decently. In even the best groups there is usually at least one idiot who doesn't play their character right. Either they have been pl'd up, or they play two accounts to get double pts/loot but can't really keep up with it, or they are using a friends account, or most commonly, they just aren't any good at the game.
Part of the problem may be that you come from an EQ background. The real problem is that EQ has been hacked and botted all to hell and people have been doing it for years. By the time WoW reaches the point EQ has, the game will be at the end of its reasonable life anyway and it will be time to move on to the next good game.
"While the player may not have a legal leg to stand on, they can make problems for Blizzard both legally and in terms of public relations."
You have to agree not to hold Blizzard liable for this every other day if you play WoW. So your right, they wouldn't have a legal leg to stand on. If someone wanted to create a PR nightmare but have no legal leg to stand on they can do that now without virtual gold. In fact, I would argue that someone who spent 50 hours earning an item and then losing it to a time warp is more likely to raise a stink than someone who spent $50 on one.
"On top of all that, since the system is being used to generate the gold that people are selling, would blizzard be required to file any REAL financial documents? This is different from eBay where people list items bought or created somewhere else, these sold items are created in game."
I am not sure I really follow your logic here. The gold can be likened to say magic the gathering trading cards (or pokemon or whatever). The value of the cards is only as a collectable. Wizards of the coast (the makers of magic) are only responsible for their profits on producing and selling the cards, not for the collectable value of the cards among traders.
There could be a good argument that those who are profiting on selling/exchanging the gold should be paying taxes on those gains, but I imagine how the collectables are valued for inventory is already covered under tax law.
According to merriam-Webster
"1 : to get into one's hands or into one's possession, power, or control: as a : to seize or capture physically b : to get possession of (as fish or game) by killing or capturing c (1) : to move against (as an opponent's piece in chess) and remove from play (2) : to win in a card game d : to acquire by eminent domain"
In every definition of take there is either a direct requirement or implied requirement that in order to "take" you have to "take away" something. Cut-paste takes away the origninal, copy-paste does not. Therefore to copy is NEVER to take.
Also, the COPYRIGHT belongs to developers NOT the code. A copy of the code is just a representation of an idea. Ideas are owned by nobody (or everyone). Copyright is a legal grant of certain limited rights to control how an idea is used in exchange for revealing the idea to others. You can take source code (perhaps there is only one copy and it resides on a floppy) but the only 'property' is the copyright on the source code, not the code itself. He did not steal your copyright, he infringed upon the privilages it grants you.
"To steal doesn't imply that the victim no longer has something. It states that something was taken from them."
In order to 'take' something, the victim can no longer have it.
"Bah! it's Saturday and I'm arguing semantics on Slashdot."
Tell me about it. *sighs* I wouldn't argue it if I did not think it was an important semantic though. If you forget or do not fully understand the difference between the idea (copyrighted material) and the property (the copyright granted) suddenly a lot of 'protections', 'rights', and 'enforcement' become reasonable.
And each of those things unjustly hinders the progress of mankind.
Is someone really glorifying the post it note? I am sure the inventor made a pile on them but post it notes are evil.
They get lost in the shuffle and misplaced. Those who use them lack accountability. Perhaps post it notes plugged a hole for a short time but now the world would be better without them.
In order for theft to occur he would have to take something away. He didn't steal anything. He COPIED code from one open sourced GPL project and put it into his closed project. The PearPC project still has all of their code.
In order to solve it, there has to be a problem and this really isn't a problem.
computer code is written to be interpreted by computers. Law is written to be interpreted by English speaking human beings. Almost all legal terminology can be expressed in dictionary English and there is no particular validity to the dictionary English definitions of words being usurped by legal dictionaries.
Computer code exists because computers are not able to interpret instructions written in English. Humans are.
99% of legalese is not precision at all. 99% of legalese is nonsense jargon that could be expressed using Dictionary English with the same degree of accuracy.
"What you're asking for is kind of like asking for simpler programming languages"
Not at all, programming requires special languages because it it intended for a machine. Law can be written in dictionary English because it is intended for regular English speaking people. As long as legal dictionaries exist lawyers are simply artificially supporting their profession.
I agree in principle. I would even support the effort AFTER the corporate sponsorship of congressmen has been banned permanently. Until then, I want judges who are appointed for life around to be able to overturn their legislation.
It is still going to be under that vile license of theirs. If you ask me that is worse than nothing.
Your forgetting that the US government is a sub-division of a few powerful corporations.
Only if you consider that the politicians themselves are lawyers. I certainly hope you aren't under the illusion that the US Government has anywhere near the influence and power of large corporations.
You have to pay for the write to utilize the source in your applications. You make that payment in the form of source code. Simply because there are other usages that do not cost anything does not make that any less true.
The reason you are tainted from looking at shared source is the two headed. First the license itself prevents you from utilizing the knowledge with contract law. Second, everything there is software patented.
Copyright does not require a cleanroom implementation. Patents do. Open source code is not patented.
Didn't we just read an article about bloggers getting sued by Microsoft for posting screen shots of longhorn? Will MS make up their mind already?
"Think about it. You are a parent. You have the right to know where your kids are."
Actually I suspect a parent successfully being a protective as they would like to be would result in a significant maturity impairment in the child.
Your idea really is not a bad one. Although the implant could be removed when the child is of legal age to own personal property (16 in most states, 13 in some) and getting access to the data should require a warrant for police and should not be directly accessible by parents.
"Sex offenders have no right to privacy. That's the group this law is intended for. Whether you agree with that is another argument entirely."
No actually that is the issue at hand. Sex offenders do have a right to privacy. Remember that "molesting children" is only ONE thing labeled as a sex crime. I have a friend who is tagged for life and lost his professional license because he got friendly with a 17yr old girl. Remember that this is FAR more common than child molestation.
Now you would have him be tracked and questioned if he should walk near a school, library, or daycare for the rest of his life? All because of a piece of jailbait?
How about spending the money to become LESS dependent on coal?
Because petroluem burning combustion engines are evil as well. How about investing the funds into research into non-fossil fuel energy?
"you're just not allowed to link the code into your application"
I wish people would stop repeating this. Some anal arse came up with this concept a long time ago and it did not make anymore sense then than it did now. The concept of a GPL violation during compilation or runtime is utterly ridiculous. If you allow that road of thought then running ANY software under the Linux kernel would be a GPL violation.
The exception in the Kernel GPL version is not there because it is needed, it is there to silence idiots who raise the question.
"If you have something innovative keep it closed source"
The only thing closed about closed source is the license. Anyone can decompile the binary back to a human readable form.
The GPL is a for pay scheme just like any other, the GPL simply requires payment in code rather than dollars.
f) People would like to have a license under different terms.
The ultimate aim of the GPL is to destroy the business model of writing software once and then generating sales from artificial limitations on copying. The GPL aims to force programmers to continue working in order to keep getting paid. One way to do this is to code under contract.
What do you think is better for us all, programmers writing one piece of code and then settling in as rich fat cats, or programmers writing code for 50yrs and then retiring?
"All true. But if "intelligent design" consists of the belief that the Universe was designed and/or created by a supreme being of some sort... which religion does that favor? Many, probably most, if not all, religions have creation mythology, and creation myths tend to involve supreme beings."
My post was in direct response to the parents claim that seperation of church and state is not present in any of our nations legal documentation.
The religions favored are those that believe in a supreme being. Many believe that all religions are merely tall tales and do not want their children taught they are anything else. But that is beside the point. The point here is not seperation of church and state.
The point here is that the school is creating a policy to lie to students in science class. It is bad enough that they do this is in American History. Intelligent design has no evidence to support it, therefore Intelligent design would rate as a hypothesis.
However, since there is plenty of evidence to support the theory of evolution; ID is not even an EDUCATED guess.
Remember, ID is NOT creation. ID is an alternative solution to evolution. Evolution has nothing to do with the origin of the universe. Evolution is how things progress AFTER creation. If you believe in natural selection, you can not believe in ID. The two can not be reconciled. If you believe that simple pieces can interact in complex ways (i.e. ants, bees, bird flocking, the rat neurons they slapped in a peatrie dish that figured out how to fly a flight simulator). You can not believe in ID, again, because the two are contrary to one another.
The ONLY support for ID is the logic premise (as opposed to physical evidence) that simple pieces can not interact in ways that result in complex behavior.
Soooo what about neural nets? We CREATE them, but only as far as putting lots of simple pieces together and then feeding them input. They begin to form chains and recognize voice patterns on their own without a guiding program. That is an example of evolution with a creator. ID argues that this concept is impossible, that a complex behavior like voice recognition would require intelligence guiding each and every little component. Every chain in the neural net would have to be crafted by hand... but... they arent.
I believe a lot of people still have this 1950's concept that Evolution is contrary to creation and that simply is not true.