I can chime in here... as I've pirated tons and TONS of iOS apps.
Once you know you can pirate them, the sense of value attached to individual apps is lost (Still, to this day, I do not consider apps to have 'value'... same with movies and CDs...I can't fathom spending money on them)
Then you want to try them all, etc..... I guess the question becomes, why NOT pirate the game, $2 or $4? Money saved is money saved.. and downloading pirated iOS apps is as easy as the regular store once you have everything set up. If there's 20 iOS apps you want to load on your iPod touch, you are probably a bit loathe to drop $40-$80 at once... but it's no problem to que them up in hackul0us (sorry if this is old, been a long time since i've had an iOs device)
Rofl... so they are keeping us safe by scanning our bodies with cancer rays and groping us all over... yet they are afraid to simply examine or use their nifty high tech scanner technology on a goddamn toy horse.... so they blow it up!
Tell me about it... try me shift... Saturday and Sunday I work 8am-8pm
Mon/Tue/Wed I work 12midnight-9am.....
So I go straight from regular days on sunday right into a night shift... so I have the choice of either staying up ALL night sunday after working a 12 hour shift, so I can sleep during the day monday (So I can be rested for work)... or I just pass out (what happens all of the time) from exhaustion sunday night, wake up around noon monday and end up staying awake until it's time for work at midnight....
i've been doing this for a year now and i'm used to it.... but it sucks
don't get me wrong, when i'm beat from work i'd love to drive a nice automatic.. but for any serious driving length i'd totally prefer a stick. no snobbery about it... it's just about more fine-tuned control of the vehicle, like the vehicle is an extension of you... plus i find driving an automatic incredibly boring. i feel like i'm at the mercy of the car's decision on when to change gearing ratios, I feel this gives me more control over my vehicle and thus more power to prevent an accident or safely navigate a turn.
This is actually the reason I pirate all of my kindle books. That, and at the rate me and my girlfriend read books, it would be completely not viable economically.. we're talking 3-4 books a day being read, That's much, much more money than any other general hobby (think, WoW is $15/mo.. a new GOOD book ebook/hardcopy is 3-13$)
My system is as follows; If the book is good enough that I'll want to read it again down the line, I'll pick up the paper or hardback copy for my bookshelf.. not only does this provide great asthetics but allows portability, and allows me to loan it to friends. The kindle has more than paid for itself in a month (We have exhausted the library's supply a good while ago)... I'm sure there's plenty of people who consider what I'm doing 'wrong' and that's fine with me... I just like to read, and I can't afford to spend 100$+ a week on books.
Being an audiophile specializing in digital music for over 10 years, I am glad that finally someone from an academic background can verify this "digital dust" phenomenon. However, what the author failed to realize is that, similar to the essence of this "digital dust" issue as opposed to its analogue real world problem (that is, real dust on your desk, CDs, etc), there is a digital way to tackle it, which has been known as "digital vacuuming". It's pretty much like how you clean real dust from your floor. You need to record the sound of a vacuum machine into your computer and save it as audio clips in bitrate matching the audio files you want to clean, and put them in the folders of your audio files. To clean, just play the vacuum sound for a while (1-5min depending on file sizes) and it will clean the audio files in that folder. The key is matching the bitrate of vacuum sound to your audio files. It works like a charm! And I would suggest implementing this procedure on a regular basis to preserve your audio files in perfect status.
This is actually a well known tactic in carding circles.
After you've used and abused the 'virgin' cards, it's standard fare to spam them in IRC so they are used so much so quickly by so many that you are a needle in the haystack.
Why is it news that they are honoring these pre-orders? To pre-order, don't you have to actually, uh, pay for the game? Whenever I've pre-ordered something at my local gamestop I usually pay full price and just pick up on release.
Now, maybe they have some sort of 'down payment' thing, and then on release date you pay the remainder... but still.. why wouldn't they honor them? I can't see any reason why they wouldn't.
Case in point, I ordered Team Fortress 2 a long, LONG time ago. I'm talking about when they were releasing the videos of the army guys and the turrets, looked 'realistic' (for tech back then) etc etc.. the game that never came out.
I pre-ordered this game because it was on Game Stop's 'RELEASES' board. I was an avid player of Quakeworld TF and MegaTF.
Know what? I only got one call, asking if I wanted to change my order to The Oranage Box because it was learned tf2 was being shipped with it. Of course, I did.. and TF2 was a totally different game at this point.. but at no time did I lose my pre-order.
Thank you. Finally someone else who sees bitcoin for what it really is.
It's an elaborate ponzi scheme designed to generate insane interest at the very beginning (due to people starting getting crazy amounts of BTC).. in turn these people become huge vested in increasing bitcoin's value.. so much so that they becomes fanatics and thus you see stories like this EVERYWHERE these days... more interest is generated by seeing people with 1000s of coins and a $7 exchange rate, leading to a huge influx of more people looking to generate coins, so on and so forth i've said it before and i'll say it again
In the beginning of BTC mining, the FEW people who programmed/used their own personal GPU miners on huge farms (while everyone else was still using CPU) are the only ones who are going to benefit (See more that a couple thousand dollars) from this crap... everything else is just increasing value for these guys.
This is just from the ridiculous inflated exchange rate.
The article even said he was going to buy 10,000 BTC.. if he would have done that instead (with the current exchange rate) he'd be sitting at $70k
As you can see, mining is a fool's errand. Now.. buying a thousand or so BTC might have seemed like a smart move on my part right about now, wish I did. Bitcoin seems akin to a pyramid scheme. The early adopters get insane amounts, this leads to a huge increase of people 'using' and 'valuing' the currency because of interest in generating money, in turn exponentially increasing the value of said currency.
The real people benefiting are the super-early adopters who have 10,000+ BTC who have been using custom build GPU mining software from the start. Everyone else just pretty much helps add value to their insane amounts
This is something that people do all the time; everywhere.
As a matter of fact, living in CA, it has its' own lingo associated with it
called 'blowing a house up'.. it's when you rent a property for the sole purpose of growing pot in every square inch possible
As a matter of fact, I see a good handful of property owners who advertise properties on craigslist/budtrader for the sole purpose of doing this.
Then again, this is California where it is BIG BUSINESS. People make millions upon millions from legal pot here, so of course a market will spring up around places to grow it, it's only natural when so much $ is involved
This is so true.. although i'm still a 'slave' to the monster out of need.. valve has royally screwed me just like that one time.
I lost my entire account (The entire thing, banned) with well over $300 worth of games. Almost everyone valve-made game. CoD: MW, BF:BC2
How does this happen, you say? You receive a gift from a random friend who you never talked to (The gift was Left4Dead 2, because he wanted someone to play with) and it turns out whoever's credit card he used, issues a chargeback... your account is locked/banned permanently!
No matter what I did or said, I could not get my account back. They wouldn't just remove the offending game. They wouldn't let me pay the ***MEASLY FIVE DOLLARS (on sale) THE GAME COST WHEN THIS HAPPENED*** to get my account back.
They pretty much thought I was part of some kind of credit card fraud ring and banned me outright, when I offered to fax them multiple forms of identification AND the credit card used to purchase *Every single game* on my account...
But no, in the end, it came down to one single $5 gift given to me randomly from some douchebag to take away all my games.
Fuck you Valve.
(I still love you, though.. Portal 2 was awesome.. but this just isn't fair)
I was obviously a troll, I know this lodsys stuff has everyone up in a frenzy, I was just bored and fishing for replies.. you should see my other thread, so many ragers.
Uhm, don't you think it would be cheaper to BUY A FUCKING LICENSE TO THE PATENT?
They are ONLY ASKING FOR a very VERY small amount. An amount so small you'd be pressed to notice considering you're using their technology to sell your application with a crippled free-ware version that you can upgrade.
They should be allowed to PROFIT from TECHNOLOGY THEY PATENTED (or bought the patent to) That's the ENTIRE POINT OF THE PATENT SYSTEM.
Sure, it would be hugely expensive to fight a lawsuit... They aren't asking for THOUSANDS OF DOLLARS, they are asking for an absolute tiny amount of revenue that you gain, by using their technology.
Deal with it, this company was the first to PATENT this technology...
So you need to buy a license to use this tech.
If you don't like it, stop offering in-app upgrades. Why is that so difficult for people to understand? I know why.. because they want their "Freeware app" to lure in buyers..
DEAL WITH IT, make your app either free or completely pay for. Stop offering in-app upgrades unless you want to license the technology (and it's not like they are being unreasonable in what they are asking for a license, it's a very very small amount)
It's not Apple's fault developers didn't do their research on patents before they made a product. This is something *every company* has to do during R&D. As a matter of fact, most companies hire entire DIFFERENT companies to see if they are in violation of any patents! Just because you're a 'little guy' should mean you're immune to this procedure? I think not. When you are developing, you NEED to make sure you are not violating any patents. If it does violate patents, find a different way.
It really is that simple, I don't understand why everyone is up in arms... well I do.. people want something for nothing. If ANY ONE of these developers were the one to come up/patent this idea, they would be equally as pissed if every single app on the bigger app-market in the world used their technology without a license; I know I would be furious.
So, you didn't do your research and violated a patent
Now you expect Apple to bail you out?
Why doesn't anyone just buy a license? It's painfully cheap, something alone the lines of a COUPLE CENTS per app sold for a $2 app.
I guess we should just allow the 'little guys' to replicate patent functionality as much as they want without fear of consequences. Talk about stopping innovation... nobody will bother with innovation anymore because it no longer would be profitable.. because any functionality you devise could be easily replicated and copied by anyone willing to undercut you. There is a reason we have patents..
Buy a goddamn license and stop whining to apple to bail you out, jesus. You're big boys making big money from the app store, you can take care of yourself.
Otherwise, remove the in-app upgrade from your application.
This is not true if you use google's free calling feature from gmail via the google talk plugin.
I haven't paid for any phone service for a year now, because if you have a google voice account, when you make a phone call (For free!) Via Gmail it calls with your GVoice number (It appears on the other party's caller ID) and people can call YOU with your google voice number, simply by adding google talk as a forwarding phone under GVoice.
Now, if google would create an app that interfaced with the google talk plugin like gmail, and let you place phonecalls for free over THEIR network, I could see the phone companies getting pretty irritated.
Hell, I already have a feeling comcast must be getting pretty miffed... I have completely free home phone service that is in almost all ways better than a regular land-line, save for the power requirements and no access to 911 (Cell phone with no service fixes this problem)
Then they shouldn't advertise their service as 'blazing fast' and 'unlimited'... specifically to appeal to those 'bad users' you are going on about..
I'm one of the 5%. I regularly use over 400gb of bandwidth a month streaming, downloading DVDRs, etc etc etc.
When I see an advertisement for 'blazing fast, unlimited mobile internet!' what do I think of? I think of doing everything I do at home, out of the home on my laptop. This includes streaming copious amounts of netflix, downloading DVDRs, etc. If they want to see a limited package, that's all fine. They just need to tell us that before we purchase it, and NOT in infinitely small text. They need to advertise their service as, "Blazing fast, unless you download more than 1 movie's worth of data between 4-6, then its modem-fast." That way I could make an informed decision in my buying choice. I could obviously see, hey, this plan ISN'T for me! And I would pick something more along the lines of what i needed (And likely, more expensive)
Heh, I remember my days on Q-link as a 4-5 year old, very shrouded those memories are.
I distinctly remember the very colorful splash page, and "People Connection" always intrigued me, but it was a PLUS+ feature that costed extra minutes!
Slashdot Mirror
I can chime in here... as I've pirated tons and TONS of iOS apps.
Once you know you can pirate them, the sense of value attached to individual apps is lost (Still, to this day, I do not consider apps to have 'value'... same with movies and CDs...I can't fathom spending money on them)
Then you want to try them all, etc..... I guess the question becomes, why NOT pirate the game, $2 or $4? Money saved is money saved.. and downloading pirated iOS apps is as easy as the regular store once you have everything set up. If there's 20 iOS apps you want to load on your iPod touch, you are probably a bit loathe to drop $40-$80 at once... but it's no problem to que them up in hackul0us (sorry if this is old, been a long time since i've had an iOs device)
Rofl... so they are keeping us safe by scanning our bodies with cancer rays and groping us all over... yet they are afraid to simply examine or use their nifty high tech scanner technology on a goddamn toy horse.... so they blow it up!
stay classy, orlando
Oh come on... I had no idea about this but reading your post.. I promptly looked it up
One of the funniest pranks i've ever seen hahaha
where is everyone's sense of humor?
http://gizmodo.com/343348/confessions-the-meanest-thing-gizmodo-did-at-ces
Tell me about it... try me shift... Saturday and Sunday I work 8am-8pm
Mon/Tue/Wed I work 12midnight-9am.....
So I go straight from regular days on sunday right into a night shift... so I have the choice of either staying up ALL night sunday after working a 12 hour shift, so I can sleep during the day monday (So I can be rested for work)... or I just pass out (what happens all of the time) from exhaustion sunday night, wake up around noon monday and end up staying awake until it's time for work at midnight....
i've been doing this for a year now and i'm used to it.... but it sucks
don't get me wrong, when i'm beat from work i'd love to drive a nice automatic.. but for any serious driving length i'd totally prefer a stick. no snobbery about it... it's just about more fine-tuned control of the vehicle, like the vehicle is an extension of you... plus i find driving an automatic incredibly boring. i feel like i'm at the mercy of the car's decision on when to change gearing ratios, I feel this gives me more control over my vehicle and thus more power to prevent an accident or safely navigate a turn.
This is actually the reason I pirate all of my kindle books. That, and at the rate me and my girlfriend read books, it would be completely not viable economically.. we're talking 3-4 books a day being read, That's much, much more money than any other general hobby (think, WoW is $15/mo.. a new GOOD book ebook/hardcopy is 3-13$)
My system is as follows; If the book is good enough that I'll want to read it again down the line, I'll pick up the paper or hardback copy for my bookshelf.. not only does this provide great asthetics but allows portability, and allows me to loan it to friends.
The kindle has more than paid for itself in a month (We have exhausted the library's supply a good while ago)... I'm sure there's plenty of people who consider what I'm doing 'wrong' and that's fine with me... I just like to read, and I can't afford to spend 100$+ a week on books.
It's weird but I've experienced the opposite...
People who are very illiterate with computers ask me about 'hacking' their device constantly, for free stuff.
Being an audiophile specializing in digital music for over 10 years, I am glad that finally someone from an academic background can verify this "digital dust" phenomenon. However, what the author failed to realize is that, similar to the essence of this "digital dust" issue as opposed to its analogue real world problem (that is, real dust on your desk, CDs, etc), there is a digital way to tackle it, which has been known as "digital vacuuming". It's pretty much like how you clean real dust from your floor. You need to record the sound of a vacuum machine into your computer and save it as audio clips in bitrate matching the audio files you want to clean, and put them in the folders of your audio files. To clean, just play the vacuum sound for a while (1-5min depending on file sizes) and it will clean the audio files in that folder. The key is matching the bitrate of vacuum sound to your audio files. It works like a charm! And I would suggest implementing this procedure on a regular basis to preserve your audio files in perfect status.
I vaguely remember playing a SWAT game for PC that pretty much did this.. kind of..
Well, actually, it used real-life video in place of rendered graphics, the video changing based on which direction you went.
This has totally happened to me.
Totally boned the cisco firewall, email was totally BROKEN, and I was winging it..
I was so green that i didn't even realize we paid for cisco support contracts.... spent hours searching through google and manuals
what you said is exactly right, people don't bitch on forums about problems with enterprise cisco equipment, they call support
True this ;)
I've worked many-a-jobs where the first day was "Okay oh shit.... I don't have a clue what i'm doing... let's fire up google"
Hell, one time I was hired to admin / datamine some small-time company's SQL database..
had no clue what SQL even was when I was hired, but sure as hell did after 6 months of being knee-deep inside the database
This is actually a well known tactic in carding circles.
After you've used and abused the 'virgin' cards, it's standard fare to spam them in IRC so they are used so much so quickly by so many that you are a needle in the haystack.
Why is it news that they are honoring these pre-orders? To pre-order, don't you have to actually, uh, pay for the game? Whenever I've pre-ordered something at my local gamestop I usually pay full price and just pick up on release.
Now, maybe they have some sort of 'down payment' thing, and then on release date you pay the remainder... but still.. why wouldn't they honor them? I can't see any reason why they wouldn't.
Case in point, I ordered Team Fortress 2 a long, LONG time ago. I'm talking about when they were releasing the videos of the army guys and the turrets, looked 'realistic' (for tech back then) etc etc.. the game that never came out.
I pre-ordered this game because it was on Game Stop's 'RELEASES' board. I was an avid player of Quakeworld TF and MegaTF.
Know what? I only got one call, asking if I wanted to change my order to The Oranage Box because it was learned tf2 was being shipped with it. Of course, I did.. and TF2 was a totally different game at this point.. but at no time did I lose my pre-order.
Thank you. Finally someone else who sees bitcoin for what it really is.
It's an elaborate ponzi scheme designed to generate insane interest at the very beginning (due to people starting getting crazy amounts of BTC).. in turn these people become huge vested in increasing bitcoin's value.. so much so that they becomes fanatics and thus you see stories like this EVERYWHERE these days... more interest is generated by seeing people with 1000s of coins and a $7 exchange rate, leading to a huge influx of more people looking to generate coins, so on and so forth
i've said it before and i'll say it again
In the beginning of BTC mining, the FEW people who programmed/used their own personal GPU miners on huge farms (while everyone else was still using CPU) are the only ones who are going to benefit (See more that a couple thousand dollars) from this crap... everything else is just increasing value for these guys.
This is just from the ridiculous inflated exchange rate.
The article even said he was going to buy 10,000 BTC .. if he would have done that instead (with the current exchange rate) he'd be sitting at $70k
As you can see, mining is a fool's errand. Now.. buying a thousand or so BTC might have seemed like a smart move on my part right about now, wish I did. Bitcoin seems akin to a pyramid scheme. The early adopters get insane amounts, this leads to a huge increase of people 'using' and 'valuing' the currency because of interest in generating money, in turn exponentially increasing the value of said currency.
The real people benefiting are the super-early adopters who have 10,000+ BTC who have been using custom build GPU mining software from the start. Everyone else just pretty much helps add value to their insane amounts
This is something that people do all the time; everywhere.
As a matter of fact, living in CA, it has its' own lingo associated with it
called 'blowing a house up'.. it's when you rent a property for the sole purpose of growing pot in every square inch possible
As a matter of fact, I see a good handful of property owners who advertise properties on craigslist/budtrader for the sole purpose of doing this.
Then again, this is California where it is BIG BUSINESS. People make millions upon millions from legal pot here, so of course a market will spring up around places to grow it, it's only natural when so much $ is involved
This is so true.. although i'm still a 'slave' to the monster out of need.. valve has royally screwed me just like that one time.
I lost my entire account (The entire thing, banned) with well over $300 worth of games. Almost everyone valve-made game. CoD: MW, BF:BC2
How does this happen, you say? You receive a gift from a random friend who you never talked to (The gift was Left4Dead 2, because he wanted someone to play with) and it turns out whoever's credit card he used, issues a chargeback... your account is locked/banned permanently!
No matter what I did or said, I could not get my account back. They wouldn't just remove the offending game. They wouldn't let me pay the ***MEASLY FIVE DOLLARS (on sale) THE GAME COST WHEN THIS HAPPENED*** to get my account back.
They pretty much thought I was part of some kind of credit card fraud ring and banned me outright, when I offered to fax them multiple forms of identification AND the credit card used to purchase *Every single game* on my account...
But no, in the end, it came down to one single $5 gift given to me randomly from some douchebag to take away all my games.
Fuck you Valve.
(I still love you, though.. Portal 2 was awesome.. but this just isn't fair)
hahhaha /.'s troll-sense must be off lately
I was obviously a troll, I know this lodsys stuff has everyone up in a frenzy, I was just bored and fishing for replies.. you should see my other thread, so many ragers.
Lol, I definitely win troll of the thread.
Yeah, lodesys is a bunch of punks akin to a mafia protection racket..
But I was in a shitty mood and wanted to troll
got a killer rage response from /. though, score +1
Uhm, don't you think it would be cheaper to BUY A FUCKING LICENSE TO THE PATENT?
They are ONLY ASKING FOR a very VERY small amount. An amount so small you'd be pressed to notice considering you're using their technology to sell your application with a crippled free-ware version that you can upgrade.
They should be allowed to PROFIT from TECHNOLOGY THEY PATENTED (or bought the patent to)
That's the ENTIRE POINT OF THE PATENT SYSTEM.
Sure, it would be hugely expensive to fight a lawsuit... They aren't asking for THOUSANDS OF DOLLARS, they are asking for an absolute tiny amount of revenue that you gain, by using their technology.
Not at all unreasonable.
and just buy a license.
Deal with it, this company was the first to PATENT this technology...
So you need to buy a license to use this tech.
If you don't like it, stop offering in-app upgrades. Why is that so difficult for people to understand? I know why.. because they want their "Freeware app" to lure in buyers..
DEAL WITH IT, make your app either free or completely pay for. Stop offering in-app upgrades unless you want to license the technology (and it's not like they are being unreasonable in what they are asking for a license, it's a very very small amount)
It's not Apple's fault developers didn't do their research on patents before they made a product. This is something *every company* has to do during R&D. As a matter of fact, most companies hire entire DIFFERENT companies to see if they are in violation of any patents! Just because you're a 'little guy' should mean you're immune to this procedure? I think not. When you are developing, you NEED to make sure you are not violating any patents. If it does violate patents, find a different way.
It really is that simple, I don't understand why everyone is up in arms... well I do.. people want something for nothing. If ANY ONE of these developers were the one to come up/patent this idea, they would be equally as pissed if every single app on the bigger app-market in the world used their technology without a license; I know I would be furious.
So, you didn't do your research and violated a patent
Now you expect Apple to bail you out?
Why doesn't anyone just buy a license? It's painfully cheap, something alone the lines of a COUPLE CENTS per app sold for a $2 app.
I guess we should just allow the 'little guys' to replicate patent functionality as much as they want without fear of consequences. Talk about stopping innovation... nobody will bother with innovation anymore because it no longer would be profitable.. because any functionality you devise could be easily replicated and copied by anyone willing to undercut you. There is a reason we have patents..
Buy a goddamn license and stop whining to apple to bail you out, jesus. You're big boys making big money from the app store, you can take care of yourself.
Otherwise, remove the in-app upgrade from your application.
It's really that simple.
This is not true if you use google's free calling feature from gmail via the google talk plugin.
I haven't paid for any phone service for a year now, because if you have a google voice account, when you make a phone call (For free!) Via Gmail it calls with your GVoice number (It appears on the other party's caller ID) and people can call YOU with your google voice number, simply by adding google talk as a forwarding phone under GVoice.
Now, if google would create an app that interfaced with the google talk plugin like gmail, and let you place phonecalls for free over THEIR network, I could see the phone companies getting pretty irritated.
Hell, I already have a feeling comcast must be getting pretty miffed... I have completely free home phone service that is in almost all ways better than a regular land-line, save for the power requirements and no access to 911 (Cell phone with no service fixes this problem)
Then they shouldn't advertise their service as 'blazing fast' and 'unlimited'... specifically to appeal to those 'bad users' you are going on about..
I'm one of the 5%. I regularly use over 400gb of bandwidth a month streaming, downloading DVDRs, etc etc etc.
When I see an advertisement for 'blazing fast, unlimited mobile internet!' what do I think of? I think of doing everything I do at home, out of the home on my laptop. This includes streaming copious amounts of netflix, downloading DVDRs, etc. If they want to see a limited package, that's all fine. They just need to tell us that before we purchase it, and NOT in infinitely small text. They need to advertise their service as, "Blazing fast, unless you download more than 1 movie's worth of data between 4-6, then its modem-fast." That way I could make an informed decision in my buying choice. I could obviously see, hey, this plan ISN'T for me! And I would pick something more along the lines of what i needed (And likely, more expensive)
Heh, I remember my days on Q-link as a 4-5 year old, very shrouded those memories are.
I distinctly remember the very colorful splash page, and "People Connection" always intrigued me, but it was a PLUS+ feature that costed extra minutes!