I find it unlikely that patches and workarounds are not already on IRC. Everytime a game comes out the developers say "oooh, look, uncrackable!" and 8 hours later warez versions are circulating. It's only a matter of a few days before they leak out of the close knit circles and start multiplying in public on p2p networks, FTP, and more.
The solution, of course, is to stop buying the fucking games. Although, wisely spending money by picking and choosing responsible vendors has never been a concept slashbots got while they sat around bitching about this sort of thing. Every time some idiot company like Valve releases some half cocked POS activation scheme, write them a letter far more polite and professional than this post explaining exactly why you're not going to buy it.
If I wanted to pay people to hurt me I'd give the crackhead down on the corner fifty cents to kick me in the nuts. I don't need to pay $50 so I can sit around screwing with a stupid activation code for eight hours while I chomp aspirin to keep from dying of a heart attack as my blood pressure blows through the goddamn roof.
And every geek on here that screams and moans and whines about Microsoft activation ran out and bought the damn game the minute it was on the shelf, I'm sure.
Slashdotters: Walking the Walk and Mumbling the Talk since 1997.
It was just idle speculation as to why he hasn't sought out a specialist already. I don't think he should fiddle with trying to get into a hospital, I think he needs to get to a specialist ASAP. Infections, especially ones that haven't been properly treated for this amount of time, can turn deadly over the course of an afternoon. He may feel better now, but he's too far along to risk this anymore.
See that star next to my name idiot-boy? I already RTFA. He needs to go to the specialist right now not wait until Friday.
Infections can and do spread through the body at an exponential rate once they break loose. This man CANNOT afford to wait until Friday, he needs to go the ID specialist IMMEDIATELY or he could well be dead or permanently injured before he has a chance Friday.
This man does not need his story posted on Slashdot, he needs emergency intervention from the specialist RIGHT NOW even if that means he gets screwed on some BS clause in his insurance contract. He's been running around with this infection for so long it's getting critical and he needs to skip out on all the nonsense and get help IMMEDIATELY. When you're talking about spreading infections the last thing you want to do is roll the dice by delaying treatment. Yea, it might slow enough for him to be okay, but it's an infection, so maybe not.
Christ, if he's going to get screwed by some stupid HMO if he doesn't play their little game or something, I'll toss a couple bucks into a donation fund for the medical bills if someone sets one up.
No, I'm stomping all over you because you're commenting on something you have almost no experience with as if you had something worthwhile to say.
Second point: you go on to use the tried and true arrgument of Slashdot economics: "buggywhip". Unfortunately for you and all the stammering morons on Slashdot who keep using it, you're not using it right. If this were a matter of replacing outdated models of business with better, more efficient ones, you'd have a point. However, it's not - at some point the price of a product can no longer drop without lowering the profits when distributors are being squeezed to artificially cut costs. Guess who pays when profits drop? Workers. So, riddle me this oh wise one of the free markets: how does a company with no more costs to cut on the production of the product lower its prices without hurting the employees?
Wal-mart sells more cheaply because they buy larger numbers.
THAT statement truly highlights your ignorance on the subject. While Wal Mart gets better prices than mom and pop because it buys bulk, it gets its best prices by squeezing distributors with threats: cut the price, or I won't buy it, and you know you can't afford to not sell it here. This is a rather well known practice of theirs and the fact that you didn't appear to know it only bolsters my opinion of you as an arrogant punk shooting off at the mouth about things he doesn't understand.
Finally, nobody actually uses the term monopoly to mean that the company is the only producer, it's the only significant producer. Microsoft, for all intents and purposes, has no viable competition in the desktop market - hence the use of the term monopoly in reference to Microsoft. If you have to start resorting to dictionary-strict pendanticism to back up your point, you need to reconsider your position.
And since Wal Mart has effectively killed all the other general shops, who are they going to sell to? I can't walk down to my local mom and pop store to pick up a basic frying pan because - oops, Wal Mart put it out of business. I can't walk down to my local electronics store and buy a DVD player because - oops, Best Buy put it out of business.
Society can most certainly cannibalize itself, that's what capitalism is all about. How do you think middle classes disappear entirely, by magic? No, because the stupid middle class, in a vain attempt to "save money" in their quest to become upper class let's the upper class abuse it beyond all logic until it becomes lower class.
Keep it up, and the distributors won't stop selling to Wal Mart because Wal Mart won't have competition to sell to. You do realize, I assume, that it took the government trust busters to break up all that shit about a hundred years ago, don't you? The situation with coal, oil, railroads, etc. was too far gone by then for capitalism to sort it out. Nobody would/could buy their oil from anyone but Rockefeller, and it was so tightly packed by then that any competitor that managed to squeak itself into the sector was immediately smashed because Standard Oil could afford to easily undercut the enemy until it disappeared.
Not only CAN it happen, it HAS happened and it IS happening.
In other words, you're a male between the ages of 15 and 23 - which is not a broad range in the least, it's a grouping that's actually somewhat narrow for more than a few purposes - you're education was paid for by people who aren't you, and you've held nothing but the mindless grunt-work service jobs reserved for the young and/or uneducated for the extreme majority of your working life.
Yet, you sit there and dismiss the legitimate complaints of individuals who were working real full time jobs before your mommy squeezed you out from between her legs as if you had something worthwhile to say when, in fact, you are attempting to write the entire concern off as rambling nonsense from a woman who would be well served by a dildo.
Or, to wrap your entire post up into the four words that you should have posted as a response:
"Yes, you are right."
Indeed, you are brain dead for wanting to pay as little as possible. What you fail to realize is this very simple concept in economics: products can only get so cheap before they can't be any cheaper without losing money. As such, by buying at Wal Mart you encourage their behavior of artificially forcing prices below costs which forces employers to pay less and/or cut jobs. In return for a higher unemployment rate and lower incomes, the only thing you get is a savings of a couple bucks right now so that, in the future, the only place you can purchase the product is at Wal Mart. Riddle me this, child. If the only place you can buy the product is at the single store that the producer can (barely) afford to sell to, what do you think is going to happen to the prices on that product?
It's this simple concept of economics that you clearly didn't learn about in your community "college": by encouraging huge corporations to eliminate competition through abusive practices targeted at distributors, you ensure only one thing: monopolization of the sector. Guess what happens to prices and business practice in monopolies? Hmmm.... I wonder...
Your grasp of economic issues and the problems caused within a free market by predatory businesses like Wal Mart is truly awe inspiring. In addition, based on your largely ignorant response, I'm going to make a few likely assumptions about you:
You are male, between the ages of 15 and 23.
You are in high school or college.
Your entire education will be paid for by people who aren't you.
You've likely never held a permanent "real" job. Assuming you've ever had a job rather than sponging off your parents, it was in the services industry and you spent most of your time standing around jerking off in the storeroom rather than working.
I find it unlikely you're capable of grasping the concepts involved in such a complicated matter as, based on your response, you are almost certainly an ignorant whelp sponging off your parents or society as a whole. When you've actually spent a little bit of time in the real world - which does not include sitting around on your ever widening ass doing homework at your own pace on your own schedule in between attending 15 hours of class each week - come back and review the situation here and see if you can figure out why this sort of behavior on the part of a corporation is bad for salaried employees in general, not just the people being abused.
If you're truly so staggeringly ignorant that you can't follow the basic processes behind Wal Mart's behavior and figure out why buying low priced junk from them is going to cause you and everybody else more harm than good in the long run, please simply take a shotgun, insert it into the back of your throat, and pull the trigger. It's not that complicated of a concept, and if you really are so lacking in the most basic economic skills that you can't figure it out, you'd really do us all a favor if you just killed yourself.
Uh... you can boycott a company on grounds other than them having a shoddy product. I think Blizzard makes great games, actually. I have a problem with their treatment of the bnetd team, and, actually, I still won't play on b.net because of it.
If I didn't think they had a desirable product I wouldn't need to boycott because I wouldn't buy it anyway.
Actually, it already has. Despite what hoity toity Mr. Jones on the street corner may think while he waxes poetic under a flag he may as well be using to wipe his ass for all the respect he has for it, much of the world that could actually benefit from U.S. intervention, frequently in S. America and Africe, is ignored. None of the major countries need our support, nor have they since the end of the cold war.
It's already passed, we just haven't realized we're knocking ourselves into irrelevance with our arrogant attitude toward the rest of the world. We're being left behind, and, as my idiot countryment proved less than two weeks ago, we don't even know it yet.
Actually, he/she/it is right. There's no real evidence except Bin Laden's claim of responsibility if you really sit down and think about it.
Not that this lets old binny boy off the hook, but what if he's not really the perp and the real bad guys got away? How would you ever know since our loving government didn't see fit to share all the evidence with us that they claim to have?
Did something similar to Blizzard. I wanted Warcraft III, but I didn't want to help support the company that decided not to let me choose how to play my game if I wanted to use bnetd. So, I didn't buy it when it first came out. Waited for a little while until the price dropped and new games came out, then purchased it at Electronics Boutique used. I paid less and Blizzard got no extra money.
Better idea: don't boycott Wal Mart, only purchase "loss leaders".
A loss leader is a product they put out at an outrageously low price. Then, when you get into the department selling it, it's near stuff you're more likely to want which is usually NOT the best possible price.
Which, following your example, would mean that anybody who has firsthand experience with any negative behavior would be unjustified in sharing that experience with the intent of preventing it in other people because that would be "hypocrisy".
Fascinating theory you have there.
In addition, what you fail to realize is that Microsoft still has every right to tell you what you are and are not allowed to do with their software. This right is not magically forfeited because of any illicit behavior on their part. Though specific rights in specific circumstances may warrant legal removal of certain rights to certain things they own - such as the application in question in this example - there is certainly no sweeping removal that would justify your illicit behavior. That's why remedies exist for this sort of behavior - to punish people. Part of that punishment does not involve removing the rights they retain on their property.
I didn't say there was nothing to worry about, I said there's nothing to see here. And there isn't. When there's a ruling, and it rules in favor of keeping the record sealed, then you can worry.
You must be a manager. Nobody else could possibly have posted something as stupid as "get over it". Here's a better idea: walk the entire team right the fuck out halfway through the project and watch the idiots in upper management scramble like a bunch of helpless, headless chickens to try and replace the people who's backs they break to make their $3000 mortgage payments in between day time trips to the golf course and porking their secretaries on the Italian leather sofa in the office they're in for 5% of the week.
The country doesn't need white collar workers to "get over it", it needs workers to stand up and tell managers to go piss up a rope. Remember people: management doesn't actually DO anything. No company can run with only management because they don't actually do any of the work. If enough people get up and walk out at once, they're screwed.
What are you, five years old? Do you even the slightest fucking clue what this is? It's a response, to the court, based on a petition by EFF to unseal the documents relating to the case. They could have printed out a giant middle finger and returned it as a response and it wouldn't fucking matter.
The court still has to decide, based on the feedback from both parties, what to do about the EFF's request. Stop being an idiot slashbot and pay some fucking attention. The government is trying to protect its interests, the EFF's theres. If the court comes back with some bizarre, half cooked decision, THEN you can whine like a baby. Until then, shut the fuck up because you clearly have no idea what's going on and you're complaining about a decision that hasn't even been made yet.
Yea, right. The government "dismissed" the claims with a wave of its hand. Despite the fact that they laid out a series of reasons as to why the docs shouldn't be unsealed, only one of which dealt with an "ongoing criminal investigation". Despite the fact that they cite backup for their position in the form of prior court decisions.
What exactly are you idiots complaining about? The fact that the court system is currently working exactly as its supposed to?
Slashdot Mirror
I find it unlikely that patches and workarounds are not already on IRC. Everytime a game comes out the developers say "oooh, look, uncrackable!" and 8 hours later warez versions are circulating. It's only a matter of a few days before they leak out of the close knit circles and start multiplying in public on p2p networks, FTP, and more.
The solution, of course, is to stop buying the fucking games. Although, wisely spending money by picking and choosing responsible vendors has never been a concept slashbots got while they sat around bitching about this sort of thing. Every time some idiot company like Valve releases some half cocked POS activation scheme, write them a letter far more polite and professional than this post explaining exactly why you're not going to buy it.
If I wanted to pay people to hurt me I'd give the crackhead down on the corner fifty cents to kick me in the nuts. I don't need to pay $50 so I can sit around screwing with a stupid activation code for eight hours while I chomp aspirin to keep from dying of a heart attack as my blood pressure blows through the goddamn roof.
And every geek on here that screams and moans and whines about Microsoft activation ran out and bought the damn game the minute it was on the shelf, I'm sure.
Slashdotters: Walking the Walk and Mumbling the Talk since 1997.
It was just idle speculation as to why he hasn't sought out a specialist already. I don't think he should fiddle with trying to get into a hospital, I think he needs to get to a specialist ASAP. Infections, especially ones that haven't been properly treated for this amount of time, can turn deadly over the course of an afternoon. He may feel better now, but he's too far along to risk this anymore.
See that star next to my name idiot-boy? I already RTFA. He needs to go to the specialist right now not wait until Friday.
Infections can and do spread through the body at an exponential rate once they break loose. This man CANNOT afford to wait until Friday, he needs to go the ID specialist IMMEDIATELY or he could well be dead or permanently injured before he has a chance Friday.
This man does not need his story posted on Slashdot, he needs emergency intervention from the specialist RIGHT NOW even if that means he gets screwed on some BS clause in his insurance contract. He's been running around with this infection for so long it's getting critical and he needs to skip out on all the nonsense and get help IMMEDIATELY. When you're talking about spreading infections the last thing you want to do is roll the dice by delaying treatment. Yea, it might slow enough for him to be okay, but it's an infection, so maybe not.
Christ, if he's going to get screwed by some stupid HMO if he doesn't play their little game or something, I'll toss a couple bucks into a donation fund for the medical bills if someone sets one up.
No, I'm stomping all over you because you're commenting on something you have almost no experience with as if you had something worthwhile to say.
Second point: you go on to use the tried and true arrgument of Slashdot economics: "buggywhip". Unfortunately for you and all the stammering morons on Slashdot who keep using it, you're not using it right. If this were a matter of replacing outdated models of business with better, more efficient ones, you'd have a point. However, it's not - at some point the price of a product can no longer drop without lowering the profits when distributors are being squeezed to artificially cut costs. Guess who pays when profits drop? Workers. So, riddle me this oh wise one of the free markets: how does a company with no more costs to cut on the production of the product lower its prices without hurting the employees?
Wal-mart sells more cheaply because they buy larger numbers.
THAT statement truly highlights your ignorance on the subject. While Wal Mart gets better prices than mom and pop because it buys bulk, it gets its best prices by squeezing distributors with threats: cut the price, or I won't buy it, and you know you can't afford to not sell it here. This is a rather well known practice of theirs and the fact that you didn't appear to know it only bolsters my opinion of you as an arrogant punk shooting off at the mouth about things he doesn't understand.
Finally, nobody actually uses the term monopoly to mean that the company is the only producer, it's the only significant producer. Microsoft, for all intents and purposes, has no viable competition in the desktop market - hence the use of the term monopoly in reference to Microsoft. If you have to start resorting to dictionary-strict pendanticism to back up your point, you need to reconsider your position.
And since Wal Mart has effectively killed all the other general shops, who are they going to sell to? I can't walk down to my local mom and pop store to pick up a basic frying pan because - oops, Wal Mart put it out of business. I can't walk down to my local electronics store and buy a DVD player because - oops, Best Buy put it out of business.
Society can most certainly cannibalize itself, that's what capitalism is all about. How do you think middle classes disappear entirely, by magic? No, because the stupid middle class, in a vain attempt to "save money" in their quest to become upper class let's the upper class abuse it beyond all logic until it becomes lower class.
Keep it up, and the distributors won't stop selling to Wal Mart because Wal Mart won't have competition to sell to. You do realize, I assume, that it took the government trust busters to break up all that shit about a hundred years ago, don't you? The situation with coal, oil, railroads, etc. was too far gone by then for capitalism to sort it out. Nobody would/could buy their oil from anyone but Rockefeller, and it was so tightly packed by then that any competitor that managed to squeak itself into the sector was immediately smashed because Standard Oil could afford to easily undercut the enemy until it disappeared.
Not only CAN it happen, it HAS happened and it IS happening.
In other words, you're a male between the ages of 15 and 23 - which is not a broad range in the least, it's a grouping that's actually somewhat narrow for more than a few purposes - you're education was paid for by people who aren't you, and you've held nothing but the mindless grunt-work service jobs reserved for the young and/or uneducated for the extreme majority of your working life.
Yet, you sit there and dismiss the legitimate complaints of individuals who were working real full time jobs before your mommy squeezed you out from between her legs as if you had something worthwhile to say when, in fact, you are attempting to write the entire concern off as rambling nonsense from a woman who would be well served by a dildo.
Or, to wrap your entire post up into the four words that you should have posted as a response:
"Yes, you are right."
Indeed, you are brain dead for wanting to pay as little as possible. What you fail to realize is this very simple concept in economics: products can only get so cheap before they can't be any cheaper without losing money. As such, by buying at Wal Mart you encourage their behavior of artificially forcing prices below costs which forces employers to pay less and/or cut jobs. In return for a higher unemployment rate and lower incomes, the only thing you get is a savings of a couple bucks right now so that, in the future, the only place you can purchase the product is at Wal Mart. Riddle me this, child. If the only place you can buy the product is at the single store that the producer can (barely) afford to sell to, what do you think is going to happen to the prices on that product?
It's this simple concept of economics that you clearly didn't learn about in your community "college": by encouraging huge corporations to eliminate competition through abusive practices targeted at distributors, you ensure only one thing: monopolization of the sector. Guess what happens to prices and business practice in monopolies? Hmmm.... I wonder...
Your grasp of economic issues and the problems caused within a free market by predatory businesses like Wal Mart is truly awe inspiring. In addition, based on your largely ignorant response, I'm going to make a few likely assumptions about you:
I find it unlikely you're capable of grasping the concepts involved in such a complicated matter as, based on your response, you are almost certainly an ignorant whelp sponging off your parents or society as a whole. When you've actually spent a little bit of time in the real world - which does not include sitting around on your ever widening ass doing homework at your own pace on your own schedule in between attending 15 hours of class each week - come back and review the situation here and see if you can figure out why this sort of behavior on the part of a corporation is bad for salaried employees in general, not just the people being abused.
If you're truly so staggeringly ignorant that you can't follow the basic processes behind Wal Mart's behavior and figure out why buying low priced junk from them is going to cause you and everybody else more harm than good in the long run, please simply take a shotgun, insert it into the back of your throat, and pull the trigger. It's not that complicated of a concept, and if you really are so lacking in the most basic economic skills that you can't figure it out, you'd really do us all a favor if you just killed yourself.
Uh... you can boycott a company on grounds other than them having a shoddy product. I think Blizzard makes great games, actually. I have a problem with their treatment of the bnetd team, and, actually, I still won't play on b.net because of it.
If I didn't think they had a desirable product I wouldn't need to boycott because I wouldn't buy it anyway.
Everything Microsoft makes is at least two years late, so that probably came out in 1999.
Actually, it already has. Despite what hoity toity Mr. Jones on the street corner may think while he waxes poetic under a flag he may as well be using to wipe his ass for all the respect he has for it, much of the world that could actually benefit from U.S. intervention, frequently in S. America and Africe, is ignored. None of the major countries need our support, nor have they since the end of the cold war.
It's already passed, we just haven't realized we're knocking ourselves into irrelevance with our arrogant attitude toward the rest of the world. We're being left behind, and, as my idiot countryment proved less than two weeks ago, we don't even know it yet.
Actually, he/she/it is right. There's no real evidence except Bin Laden's claim of responsibility if you really sit down and think about it.
Not that this lets old binny boy off the hook, but what if he's not really the perp and the real bad guys got away? How would you ever know since our loving government didn't see fit to share all the evidence with us that they claim to have?
Did something similar to Blizzard. I wanted Warcraft III, but I didn't want to help support the company that decided not to let me choose how to play my game if I wanted to use bnetd. So, I didn't buy it when it first came out. Waited for a little while until the price dropped and new games came out, then purchased it at Electronics Boutique used. I paid less and Blizzard got no extra money.
Better idea: don't boycott Wal Mart, only purchase "loss leaders".
A loss leader is a product they put out at an outrageously low price. Then, when you get into the department selling it, it's near stuff you're more likely to want which is usually NOT the best possible price.
Watch their ads for those "too good to be true" products, then go in and buy them and nothing else. Oh yea, and pay in cash so they can't penalize you for doing it later.
I buy stuff at Wal Mart like this - I got a pretty good A/C unit this past summer for around $70 that way. They actually lost money on my purchase.
Which, following your example, would mean that anybody who has firsthand experience with any negative behavior would be unjustified in sharing that experience with the intent of preventing it in other people because that would be "hypocrisy".
Fascinating theory you have there.
In addition, what you fail to realize is that Microsoft still has every right to tell you what you are and are not allowed to do with their software. This right is not magically forfeited because of any illicit behavior on their part. Though specific rights in specific circumstances may warrant legal removal of certain rights to certain things they own - such as the application in question in this example - there is certainly no sweeping removal that would justify your illicit behavior. That's why remedies exist for this sort of behavior - to punish people. Part of that punishment does not involve removing the rights they retain on their property.
Oh? Care to try and justify that position?
I didn't say there was nothing to worry about, I said there's nothing to see here. And there isn't. When there's a ruling, and it rules in favor of keeping the record sealed, then you can worry.
Don't you have some stock options to plunder?
You must have an MBA... don't you have resources to go waste?
You must be a manager. Nobody else could possibly have posted something as stupid as "get over it". Here's a better idea: walk the entire team right the fuck out halfway through the project and watch the idiots in upper management scramble like a bunch of helpless, headless chickens to try and replace the people who's backs they break to make their $3000 mortgage payments in between day time trips to the golf course and porking their secretaries on the Italian leather sofa in the office they're in for 5% of the week.
The country doesn't need white collar workers to "get over it", it needs workers to stand up and tell managers to go piss up a rope. Remember people: management doesn't actually DO anything. No company can run with only management because they don't actually do any of the work. If enough people get up and walk out at once, they're screwed.
Be sure to keep a spare scratch monkey....
What are you, five years old? Do you even the slightest fucking clue what this is? It's a response, to the court, based on a petition by EFF to unseal the documents relating to the case. They could have printed out a giant middle finger and returned it as a response and it wouldn't fucking matter.
The court still has to decide, based on the feedback from both parties, what to do about the EFF's request. Stop being an idiot slashbot and pay some fucking attention. The government is trying to protect its interests, the EFF's theres. If the court comes back with some bizarre, half cooked decision, THEN you can whine like a baby. Until then, shut the fuck up because you clearly have no idea what's going on and you're complaining about a decision that hasn't even been made yet.
Yea, right. The government "dismissed" the claims with a wave of its hand. Despite the fact that they laid out a series of reasons as to why the docs shouldn't be unsealed, only one of which dealt with an "ongoing criminal investigation". Despite the fact that they cite backup for their position in the form of prior court decisions.
What exactly are you idiots complaining about? The fact that the court system is currently working exactly as its supposed to?