No one should be able to sell a program whose sole purpose is breach of contract, or infringement!
Which law prevents this? The program seller is not in a contract with Blizzard, hence there is no contract to breach. The program seller is not the one using the program to violate the contract so he can't be accused of interfering with the contractual relationship.
The user of WoW is the one that is breach of contract.
No matter what they will do, Obsidian's reputation is now tainted by the debacle that is KOTOR 2. The good games released previously was under the name of Black Isle not Obsidian. Hence people who do not keep up with the industry will not know what Obsidian is capable of given a good publisher.
In any event, Locust Arts owns the rights to the SW franchise and will more than likely be interfering in KOTOR 3 just like they did with KOTOR 2. I will not waste my money like that again.
If everyone is motivated by selfish ambitions like pure capitalists' ideal world then no one would bother doing volunteer and altruistic work and it would be a much harsher place than it is now.
Do you think our society can exist without volunteer work? Many third world countries like Thailand would plunge into famine, disease and war if not for the work of the Red Cross and other individuals selflessly sacrificing their time and money without receiving anything in return to make this world a better place.
Similarly open source software is invaluable to ensure that the Internet do not plunge into proprietary vendor locked chaos that will inhibit the people from communicating with each other thus promoting understanding and knowledge that will elevate (hopefully) everyone to the next level of enlightenment.
Regardless of the rhetoric surrounding the ability of companies to make money off open source software, it still remains that at some point some developer somewhere, sacrificed their time and abilities without receiving anything back in return to give something back to the community.
To these people I say thank you. Please keep up the good work.
In the end the question is, does Verizon have a right to refuse service? The answer is yes they do. So what is the problem? A private organisation is refusing to contract with another private organisation. This is freedom of contract.
This is capitalism at it's best. If you support capitalism then you must support Verizon's right to refuse service.
I think this is a great development. I can't wait until US citizens all over the world are arrested for violating variations of sedition laws when expressing their right to free speech on their blogs. I would expect every single blog/newsgroup/discussion site maintainer located in the US (including MySpace) would be forced to execute due dilligence compliance actions with every single due sedition law in the world or they will be arrested in whatever country that they step foot in. I would also expect all US based e-commerce stores to respect product legislation laws in every country that they sell to (ie certain types of books are banned in some countries). If somehow a citizen of the said country managed to buy a copy of the prohibited book from the store the store owners should be arrested.
I guess since US citizens don't travel much that should be a problem.
The following makes me cry:
Playing 2v2 Random Team in Warcraft 3: The Frozen Throne.
RandomTeamN00b1: How do I harvest wood?
Me: *cry*.
Playing 3v3 Random Team in Warcraft 3: The Frozen Throne.
RandomTeamN00b1: WTF? Why didn't you heal my hero?
RandomTeamN00b2: Payback for ninjaing the tome. I needed that.
RandomTeamN00b1: F*(k you n00b!
RandomTeamN00b2 has left the game.
Me: *cry*
Playing Civ 4 when it first come out.
Quick Save... "Civilisation 4 has caused an application error"
Me: *Cry*.
Plaing Civ 4 after patches
Your tank has been defeated by archers!
Me: *Cry*
So you see? Games can make you emotional.:D
Although seriously, a game event that did cause a lump in my throat was when our WoW guild broke up. Everyone got online to bid each other farewell. Some of the emotes were suprisingly poigant.
Most laptop modems are those crappy soft modems which require firmware/drivers that are hard to obtain and/or only works in windows. If you wish to use the modem make sure you get one that is Linux supported.
Fundamentally, making Linux mass consumer friendly is incompatible with the concept of a Unix operating system. The basic premise of Unix is that, you have programs that do one thing well. You string lots of these programs together to perform a particular function. That is the strength of Linux, customiability. However end users don't want this. They want everything in 1 neat package that they don't have to think about to use. Notice how many real world business managers love Lotus Notes and how many techies hate it.
Under Australian law, bringing such a claim to court could be considered a vexatious suit, in which case the respondent can seek relief under the law against the plaintiff. I truly hope that Dan Brown exercises all his rights under the law against these miscreants.
Regardless of what you think of The Da Vinci Code or whether you think that Dan Brown used ideas in Holy Blood, Holy Grail the fact remains that the former fails the substantive similarity test against the latter.
The whole concept of derivative works being copyrightable is already abhorrent. Imagine if that was extended to copyright of ideas. As a civilisation we would be paralyzed as we cannot build upon knowledge of our forebears. Copyright and the entire concept of IP needs to be completely reworked from scratch.
Is there anything to stop Verizon or any ISP for that matter from QoSing sites/applications/services into oblivion unless the right price is paid. This is already happening for P2P traffic.
Another pathetic attempt by the media companies to gouge the consumers for as much as they can. The new proposed legislation, whilst giving consumers a "clear" conscience, will punish them via a Canada like tax on blanks and iPods. Surely a blatant attempt by the media companies to get back at Apple for refusing to allowing to gouge the consumer even more by the 99c/song price.
they fear and what they fear they destroy. Lets face it. The majority of political leaders of any country are completely ignorant of the technology involved in the Internet. However they fear the unexpressed potential of the Internet to spiral out of their control. Hence they seek to control it for themselves by whatever means they can grasp. The problem is they don't realise that in doing so they will destroy the Internet. For the majority of political leaders this is a desired outcome. Informed citizens, whether voting or not, is never a good thing for any political leader. How else can they spread their FUD?
This reminds me of an ancient story about a Chinese emperor. There was a brilliant scientist in China who discovered the principles of flight well before the rest of the world. He demonstrated this to the emporer by building a gigantic kite and used it to raise himself into the air. Everyone was impressed except the emperor. Instead of seeing the potential for revolutionising his society where his people can soar above the clouds like the birds he saw the invention as allowing hoards of barbarians to breach the Great Wall. His beautiful, pristine world would be shattered. The scientist was put to death and all his works were burnt.
Software products, the Internet and concepts of open source and free software are so new that our eminent law makers are having severe difficulties trying to comprehend the implications of their use on society.
The concepts of negligence, mechantable quality and misleading and deceptive conduct that prevades traditional product liability cases are difficult to apply in cases of software faults, especially when it is free software.
Modern complex systems are usually confined to specialised units such that faults can usually be traced to a responsible entity relatively easily (e.g. nuclear power plant). However very complex software products often interact with each other in the mass consumer market sometimes producing unpredictable results which may or may not be intended. Added to this is the question of even who is responsible in a free software environment where the contributors number in the thousands.
Traditional legislative framework that govern normal product liability need to be overhauled in this new complex software environment. However given that our eminent law makers will, for the forseeable future, remain wilfully ignorant of the pace of technology change I doubt things will change.
In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form, and void; and darkness was on the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters.Genesis 1:1-2.
From an Australian perspective, commercial television sucks major arse. SciFi fans get shafted the hardest. They don't keep to their programmed schedule, constantly shuffle SciFi episodes around in their timetable and show episodes out of order.
To add insult to injury Australian commercial TV show crap copies of successful "reality" tv gameshows. Popstars vs Australian Idol? Makes me spew.
Australian commerical TV brought in on themselves. Nowadays, torrent is my TV and good riddance to crappy channels 7,9 and 10.
I am currently working the defence industry. Outsourcing is a huge trend nowadays in business as well as in the military. Most of the people that I know working on IT projects and information infrastructure systems in the military are contractors of some sort. Either working for a contracting company or directly contracting themselves.
It is very unfortunate that the military personal/managers who are responsible for dealing with the contractors often have no clue about the technology involved. Hence comes the bad decisions , scope creep, project overruns etc etc. One doesn't need to look further than the huge cost and time overruns of various military projects to see the truth of this. I want to point out a specific example but unfortunately that's classified;).
The nature of military systems are quite different from normal business applications. The military tend to like staid proven technology rather than cutting edge stuff. Having worked on something similar to the Aegsis program, I can atest to the truth of this.
If you have well rounded computer science training, you will be well prepared to take any kind of IT type tasks including military information systems management and weapons systems applications.
Slashdot Mirror
No one should be able to sell a program whose sole purpose is breach of contract, or infringement!
Which law prevents this? The program seller is not in a contract with Blizzard, hence there is no contract to breach. The program seller is not the one using the program to violate the contract so he can't be accused of interfering with the contractual relationship. The user of WoW is the one that is breach of contract.
No matter what they will do, Obsidian's reputation is now tainted by the debacle that is KOTOR 2. The good games released previously was under the name of Black Isle not Obsidian. Hence people who do not keep up with the industry will not know what Obsidian is capable of given a good publisher. In any event, Locust Arts owns the rights to the SW franchise and will more than likely be interfering in KOTOR 3 just like they did with KOTOR 2. I will not waste my money like that again.
If everyone is motivated by selfish ambitions like pure capitalists' ideal world then no one would bother doing volunteer and altruistic work and it would be a much harsher place than it is now.
Do you think our society can exist without volunteer work? Many third world countries like Thailand would plunge into famine, disease and war if not for the work of the Red Cross and other individuals selflessly sacrificing their time and money without receiving anything in return to make this world a better place.
Similarly open source software is invaluable to ensure that the Internet do not plunge into proprietary vendor locked chaos that will inhibit the people from communicating with each other thus promoting understanding and knowledge that will elevate (hopefully) everyone to the next level of enlightenment.
Regardless of the rhetoric surrounding the ability of companies to make money off open source software, it still remains that at some point some developer somewhere, sacrificed their time and abilities without receiving anything back in return to give something back to the community.
To these people I say thank you. Please keep up the good work.
In the end the question is, does Verizon have a right to refuse service? The answer is yes they do. So what is the problem? A private organisation is refusing to contract with another private organisation. This is freedom of contract. This is capitalism at it's best. If you support capitalism then you must support Verizon's right to refuse service.
I think this is a great development. I can't wait until US citizens all over the world are arrested for violating variations of sedition laws when expressing their right to free speech on their blogs. I would expect every single blog/newsgroup/discussion site maintainer located in the US (including MySpace) would be forced to execute due dilligence compliance actions with every single due sedition law in the world or they will be arrested in whatever country that they step foot in. I would also expect all US based e-commerce stores to respect product legislation laws in every country that they sell to (ie certain types of books are banned in some countries). If somehow a citizen of the said country managed to buy a copy of the prohibited book from the store the store owners should be arrested. I guess since US citizens don't travel much that should be a problem.
The following makes me cry: Playing 2v2 Random Team in Warcraft 3: The Frozen Throne. RandomTeamN00b1: How do I harvest wood? Me: *cry*. Playing 3v3 Random Team in Warcraft 3: The Frozen Throne. RandomTeamN00b1: WTF? Why didn't you heal my hero? RandomTeamN00b2: Payback for ninjaing the tome. I needed that. RandomTeamN00b1: F*(k you n00b! RandomTeamN00b2 has left the game. Me: *cry* Playing Civ 4 when it first come out. Quick Save... "Civilisation 4 has caused an application error" Me: *Cry*. Plaing Civ 4 after patches Your tank has been defeated by archers! Me: *Cry* So you see? Games can make you emotional. :D
Although seriously, a game event that did cause a lump in my throat was when our WoW guild broke up. Everyone got online to bid each other farewell. Some of the emotes were suprisingly poigant.
Most laptop modems are those crappy soft modems which require firmware/drivers that are hard to obtain and/or only works in windows. If you wish to use the modem make sure you get one that is Linux supported.
Fundamentally, making Linux mass consumer friendly is incompatible with the concept of a Unix operating system. The basic premise of Unix is that, you have programs that do one thing well. You string lots of these programs together to perform a particular function. That is the strength of Linux, customiability. However end users don't want this. They want everything in 1 neat package that they don't have to think about to use. Notice how many real world business managers love Lotus Notes and how many techies hate it.
Under Australian law, bringing such a claim to court could be considered a vexatious suit, in which case the respondent can seek relief under the law against the plaintiff. I truly hope that Dan Brown exercises all his rights under the law against these miscreants.
Regardless of what you think of The Da Vinci Code or whether you think that Dan Brown used ideas in Holy Blood, Holy Grail the fact remains that the former fails the substantive similarity test against the latter.
The whole concept of derivative works being copyrightable is already abhorrent. Imagine if that was extended to copyright of ideas. As a civilisation we would be paralyzed as we cannot build upon knowledge of our forebears. Copyright and the entire concept of IP needs to be completely reworked from scratch.
Is there anything to stop Verizon or any ISP for that matter from QoSing sites/applications/services into oblivion unless the right price is paid. This is already happening for P2P traffic.
Another pathetic attempt by the media companies to gouge the consumers for as much as they can. The new proposed legislation, whilst giving consumers a "clear" conscience, will punish them via a Canada like tax on blanks and iPods. Surely a blatant attempt by the media companies to get back at Apple for refusing to allowing to gouge the consumer even more by the 99c/song price.
This reminds me of an ancient story about a Chinese emperor. There was a brilliant scientist in China who discovered the principles of flight well before the rest of the world. He demonstrated this to the emporer by building a gigantic kite and used it to raise himself into the air. Everyone was impressed except the emperor. Instead of seeing the potential for revolutionising his society where his people can soar above the clouds like the birds he saw the invention as allowing hoards of barbarians to breach the Great Wall. His beautiful, pristine world would be shattered. The scientist was put to death and all his works were burnt.
Software products, the Internet and concepts of open source and free software are so new that our eminent law makers are having severe difficulties trying to comprehend the implications of their use on society. The concepts of negligence, mechantable quality and misleading and deceptive conduct that prevades traditional product liability cases are difficult to apply in cases of software faults, especially when it is free software. Modern complex systems are usually confined to specialised units such that faults can usually be traced to a responsible entity relatively easily (e.g. nuclear power plant). However very complex software products often interact with each other in the mass consumer market sometimes producing unpredictable results which may or may not be intended. Added to this is the question of even who is responsible in a free software environment where the contributors number in the thousands. Traditional legislative framework that govern normal product liability need to be overhauled in this new complex software environment. However given that our eminent law makers will, for the forseeable future, remain wilfully ignorant of the pace of technology change I doubt things will change.
In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form, and void; and darkness was on the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters.Genesis 1:1-2.
From an Australian perspective, commercial television sucks major arse. SciFi fans get shafted the hardest. They don't keep to their programmed schedule, constantly shuffle SciFi episodes around in their timetable and show episodes out of order. To add insult to injury Australian commercial TV show crap copies of successful "reality" tv gameshows. Popstars vs Australian Idol? Makes me spew. Australian commerical TV brought in on themselves. Nowadays, torrent is my TV and good riddance to crappy channels 7,9 and 10.
I am currently working the defence industry. Outsourcing is a huge trend nowadays in business as well as in the military. Most of the people that I know working on IT projects and information infrastructure systems in the military are contractors of some sort. Either working for a contracting company or directly contracting themselves. It is very unfortunate that the military personal/managers who are responsible for dealing with the contractors often have no clue about the technology involved. Hence comes the bad decisions , scope creep, project overruns etc etc. One doesn't need to look further than the huge cost and time overruns of various military projects to see the truth of this. I want to point out a specific example but unfortunately that's classified ;).
The nature of military systems are quite different from normal business applications. The military tend to like staid proven technology rather than cutting edge stuff. Having worked on something similar to the Aegsis program, I can atest to the truth of this.
If you have well rounded computer science training, you will be well prepared to take any kind of IT type tasks including military information systems management and weapons systems applications.