A Star Wars RPG? I've got old West End books for that, and it's sooo much better than what a computer could ever provide.
World of Warcraft? I've got old D&D books for a fantasy rpg and it's soooo much better than what a computer could ever provide.
Oh. Wait. A computer can provide better graphics. More people to play with. People to play with any time of day (or night). A computer can provide ready-built stories or just mindless killing, depending on the mood I'm in. To name just a few things. So, maybe those D&D books do provide some very cool stuff that I still enjoy so I won't get rid of them but that computer game certainly provides a lot of things that the books don't even remotely provide.
The thing is someone will always drop the ball. In this case, the CEO can't chew out the guy in IT who pooched the email server and is working frantically trying to get it back up and running because that guy works for a different company. Or do people honestly think that an internally-run email server never has problems?... Just because it's Google does not mean it's infallible.
Anyone who has trouble explaining exactly what "FUD" is to a parent or whatnot should just send them to this tidbit - it's about as clear-cut an example of Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt that I've ever seen...
What really kills me is not that the RIAA and MPAA lied (*gasp*) but by how much they've lied. The numbers they quote aren't even vaguely believable. Even if one fudges some numbers and gets creative with accounting/HR tracking, the numbers are still off by several orders of magnitude. I can understand them fudging numbers (applying lost sales from a downturn in the economy to piracy, for example), but these numbers aren't even close to that. Not by the longest of long shots. As the article says, $200 billion is more than the movie and music industry combined. Are they really claiming they've lost more to piracy than they made? Are they really claiming that 7% of the unemployed are from their industries? Because that's what their numbers are saying...
Why do you hate hunters? For four seasons, hunters have been the ugly stepchildren of arean play, despite a few exceptionally skilled players managing to play hunters. The problems with the class are exceptionally well known but (it appears) it's more important to appease rogues and warriors and make one of the most popular classes in the game dramatically inferior to all others. Why? And do you honestly plan on addressing it or is there a quiet desire to keep them low on the totem pole of balance to encourage players to switch to other classes to even things out a bit? (And, yes, I have been following the upcoming changes in Wrath but I have yet to see anything that suggests that hunters will become more viable in arena play and, in fact, have seen several things that suggest hunters will become less viable (pets being insta-gibbed, for example)).
They got that number from Henry Paulson - he's so good at pulling out random large numbers that sound plausible while being founded on nothing of substance, after all.
If people think that Google is the only advertiser who's profiling people, they're daft. Any and every advertiser with a hint of intelligence studies their target audience and does everything within their power to know them better than they know themselves. Google just has more tools at their disposal than most advertising firms but they all do it.
At some point, they need to make shorting stocks illegal. I'm not an economist and I'm sure one will be happy to point out some perfectly valid reason for shorting stocks to be permitted but, I'm sorry, the ability to short stocks results in far too much outright stock manipulation in a very negative way that hurts even a healthy economy (and we all know how far from healthy this economy is...).
Ok, I often think that the anti-China hype is a lot of hot air propaganda intended purely to turn China into the new Russia-of-old but this is just daft. Yeah. Right. Hand over source code for all hardware. Sure. Let's get right on that.
Even if this wasn't from the Chinese government which, even in the best light, is a not-good government, and was instead from some "good" government that really did want the best for citizens, this would still be a bad idea. They may really want to use the source code for beneficial reasons. They may want to use the code to make sure people are safer and the world is a better place. But, people run the government and people are notoriously stupid. All it takes is one government employee with their head up their ass to accidentally leave the harddrive with all the source code in their unlocked car and have it be stolen or some other daft and moronic way of having state secrets slip into the hands of the unscrupulous. This is a situation where the motives of the government (which, of course, are going to be suspect at the best of times) don't matter in the least because the competency of the people who make up the government ensures that this is a "very bad idea"(tm).
I think, at 70%, Apple more than pays for the right to sell the songs. Music companies don't want to pay that additional hike to copyright holders? Tough. They're making 70% off each sale - they make more than enough to pay the additional fee. Greedy pricks.
The smell has been variously described as "new car smell", "musty", "rotting carpet" and even cannabis.
So, computer geeks smelled something musty, rotting, or something similar to pot. Uh, that's nothing new. They probably just need to clean up their rooms and smoke outside.
Apple didn't "a developer submitted program that was deemed competitive with Apple's product" - the did not approve an app that they felt had no difference from an existing, core application. Releasing an app, for profit, that does the exact same thing as an existing core app _should_ result in it not being approved. Something tells me that Lotus is quite dramatically different from the core apps on the iPhone which is why it was approved. Had the other developer actually _developed_ a mail app, with different features and functionality, it would have been approved.
Is it too much to ask for submission summaries that aren't so blatantly biased and inaccurate?
You have to love it when a common joke on Slashdot - that of patenting the process of patenting ideas - has finally come to pass. Reality has become a joke when a joke becomes reality.
Are we seriously considering a bar code scanner a "kiler app"? To me, a killer app is one which makes you absolutely want it, even if it means making a different hardware decision. You know, like how Halo is a killer app for XBox. A barcode scanner might be neat or even nifty and, to some rare individuals, it might be an absolutely killer app, but for the majority of people I see it being nothing more than a novelty app - something that's cool to have and you use from time to time but, most of the time, you forget you even have it.
Then again, maybe the poster is using "killer app" in a different way than I would...
Some would contend (and I have difficulty disagreeing) that, in 2000, 269 votes still wouldn't have given us President Gore - it would have just given us 269 more rejected ballots...
Actually, here's a more complete reply to your post.
The Iphone...
iPhone. See my earlier post.
... is an orwellian police state where everything you do on it is carefully censored and controlled by Apple.
Melodramatic much?
Certainly i would never use one.
You and millions of other people. Some for the same reason and others for a variety of other reasons. That's just the market exercising their right to choose. Congrats.
I wish Google or someone would come out with a phone which is based on a completely open OS like Linux and where people can write their own programs and so on for it.
You must be new here. Android. Look it up.
People often fear government as a threat to their freedom, but right here we see with Apple, an obvious violation of peoples rights to use a device that they purchased in a way they wish, and a corporation deciding what people can and cant use it for.
Ok, first, comparing Apple's controlling what apps are available for use on the iPhone with governments infringing people's freedoms? Seriously? I don't know if "melodramatic much" is adequate for that...
Second, iPhone purchasers can use the device however they want. They don't need to follow Apple's path. Just this week, iirc, it was announced that 2.1 was hacked allowing iPhone owners to install whatever apps they want. And when the next iPhone OS comes out, within a week or two, it'll be hacked as well. And so on and so on. iPhone owners can use the device however they want.
This leads in fact to stagnation, a lack of innovation.
Actually, the issue at hand is that the program in question mimicked Mail too closely without any notable differences. _THAT_ is stagnation and lack of innovation and it has nothing to do with Apple not approving applications. Had the app in question been a mail program with features that differentiated it from Mail, it surely would have been approved. But more on this later.
Many interesting developments and innovations come from innovation and improving and tinkering with an existing platform.
You mean like the efforts of the iPhone hacking team (sorry, I don't know if the team has an official name)? You mean like the efforts of the many, many, many iPhone app developers who have made some truly excellent apps already (check out Trism as but one example of a spectacular and innovative app that takes full use of the iPhone's abilities). Interesting developments and innovations surround the iPhone. And more will come as people push the limits of it's capabilities.
A platform that allows a person to develop software provides excellent conditions for new innovations, like new games or mail apps to be developed.
Um, people can develop apps for the iPhone. Apple doesn't need to approve all those apps (as they make clear in their documentation for developers), but people can develop apps for the device. There are already plenty of apps on the iPhone. Over a million have been downloaded already. Your point is a non-issue.
It sounds like the app was not approved because it was basically a carbon copy of Mail - same functions with no additional, differentiating features. So, if they approved it, people would buy the app, download it, realize they got duped into buying something that comes with the iPhone OS, get pissed and complain - the later two being things Apple wants to avoid. Rather than go that route, they did not approve the app. Had the developer actually developed something - spent some time and effort adding additional features that made the app different (and probably better) than Mail - Apple almost certainly would have approved it.
How posts like yours get modded up are beyond me. Melodramatic drivel alongside false information. Normally Slashdot reviewers get it right but sometimes they just miss the boat...
The Iphone is an orwellian police state where everything you do on it is carefully censored and controlled by Apple.
Wow. Melodramatic much? How about you just cut to the quick and drop a reference to Nazis or Hitler so we can be done with this thread right off the bat...
Oh, and for the record, it's "iPhone" - lower case "i", upper case "p". If you're going to claim it's the next biggest evil of technology, at least spell it correctly.
You make it sound like $150k in punitive damages is outrageous. What if this guy sold 1000 copies of the $60 game? Is 3x his illegal income outrageous? Ok, sure, he probably didn't sell the games for full price. Probably something like $20. And, with the internet, he could have sold 10,000 copies (or more...). So, he pulls in $200k, most of which would be profit, and he's sued for punitive damages of $150k. Does that seem outrageous? Actually, it does, but not in the way you seem to suggest...
The story doesn't state it explicitly, but my assumption is this was piracy-for-profit (making copies of the games and distributing them for a price) and thus the person deserves to be sued for the amount the law permits. Absolutely. I don't think my "period" comes too soon in the least. Piracy-for-profit deserves to be punished. Always. Period.
The idea is that it's meant to put the plaintiff in the position they would have been in had the action not occurred.
What ever gave you that (incorrect) idea? Seriously? They're called punitive damages for a reason. Here - I'll make it easy for you and not even link to Wikipedia - I'll just post the definition for you.
Punitive damages (termed exemplary damages in the United Kingdom) are damages not awarded in order to compensate the plaintiff, but in order to reform or deter the defendant and similar persons from pursuing a course of action such as that which damaged the plaintiff.
The point is to _PUNISH_ the offender sufficiently that they are discouraged from the act. It has nothing to do with putting the plaintiff into the position they'd have been in had the act never happened. It's a PUNISHMENT to the offender intended to discourage them from committing the offense in the first place.
The programmers and others will see the money in their continued paychecks as they strive to find their next big success. If Activision wins the lawsuit(s), that money doesn't go straight into some executive's pocket - it goes into the company's coffers in the same way that each game's sale does. So, yes, the programmers and others _will_ see that money.
Also, I assume the people being sued aren't being sued for making a copy of the game - they're being sued for copying _and selling_ the game(s). The damages have been well established for that sort of conduct. They deserve to be sued (if I'm correct in my assumption that they are pirates-for-profit).
If it's not related to file sharing and, presumably, is targeting people who make copies _for sale_, then good - they should be sued. As soon as you make a profit from someone else's copyrighted work, without their permission, you don't have a hint of a leg to stand on. You deserve to be sued and, hopefully, the copyright holder will win. You can make whatever argument you want about it being acceptable but, as soon as you turned a profit from the piracy, every argument you make is false. You're a crook and deserve to be punished. Period.
Slashdot Mirror
A Star Wars RPG? I've got old West End books for that, and it's sooo much better than what a computer could ever provide.
World of Warcraft? I've got old D&D books for a fantasy rpg and it's soooo much better than what a computer could ever provide.
Oh. Wait. A computer can provide better graphics. More people to play with. People to play with any time of day (or night). A computer can provide ready-built stories or just mindless killing, depending on the mood I'm in. To name just a few things. So, maybe those D&D books do provide some very cool stuff that I still enjoy so I won't get rid of them but that computer game certainly provides a lot of things that the books don't even remotely provide.
I'm just sayin'.
Here's the summary for anyone who doesn't have time to read the articles: "Cool stuff coming but we can't discuss it yet."
Is it that they broke privacy laws without a proper warant?
DING!
The thing is someone will always drop the ball. In this case, the CEO can't chew out the guy in IT who pooched the email server and is working frantically trying to get it back up and running because that guy works for a different company. Or do people honestly think that an internally-run email server never has problems?... Just because it's Google does not mean it's infallible.
Anyone who has trouble explaining exactly what "FUD" is to a parent or whatnot should just send them to this tidbit - it's about as clear-cut an example of Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt that I've ever seen...
What really kills me is not that the RIAA and MPAA lied (*gasp*) but by how much they've lied. The numbers they quote aren't even vaguely believable. Even if one fudges some numbers and gets creative with accounting/HR tracking, the numbers are still off by several orders of magnitude. I can understand them fudging numbers (applying lost sales from a downturn in the economy to piracy, for example), but these numbers aren't even close to that. Not by the longest of long shots. As the article says, $200 billion is more than the movie and music industry combined. Are they really claiming they've lost more to piracy than they made? Are they really claiming that 7% of the unemployed are from their industries? Because that's what their numbers are saying...
I would think that there _is_ a punishment for lying to Congress... Now, if Congress would just call them on the lies...
Why do you hate hunters? For four seasons, hunters have been the ugly stepchildren of arean play, despite a few exceptionally skilled players managing to play hunters. The problems with the class are exceptionally well known but (it appears) it's more important to appease rogues and warriors and make one of the most popular classes in the game dramatically inferior to all others. Why? And do you honestly plan on addressing it or is there a quiet desire to keep them low on the totem pole of balance to encourage players to switch to other classes to even things out a bit? (And, yes, I have been following the upcoming changes in Wrath but I have yet to see anything that suggests that hunters will become more viable in arena play and, in fact, have seen several things that suggest hunters will become less viable (pets being insta-gibbed, for example)).
They got that number from Henry Paulson - he's so good at pulling out random large numbers that sound plausible while being founded on nothing of substance, after all.
If people think that Google is the only advertiser who's profiling people, they're daft. Any and every advertiser with a hint of intelligence studies their target audience and does everything within their power to know them better than they know themselves. Google just has more tools at their disposal than most advertising firms but they all do it.
At some point, they need to make shorting stocks illegal. I'm not an economist and I'm sure one will be happy to point out some perfectly valid reason for shorting stocks to be permitted but, I'm sorry, the ability to short stocks results in far too much outright stock manipulation in a very negative way that hurts even a healthy economy (and we all know how far from healthy this economy is...).
Ok, I often think that the anti-China hype is a lot of hot air propaganda intended purely to turn China into the new Russia-of-old but this is just daft. Yeah. Right. Hand over source code for all hardware. Sure. Let's get right on that.
Even if this wasn't from the Chinese government which, even in the best light, is a not-good government, and was instead from some "good" government that really did want the best for citizens, this would still be a bad idea. They may really want to use the source code for beneficial reasons. They may want to use the code to make sure people are safer and the world is a better place. But, people run the government and people are notoriously stupid. All it takes is one government employee with their head up their ass to accidentally leave the harddrive with all the source code in their unlocked car and have it be stolen or some other daft and moronic way of having state secrets slip into the hands of the unscrupulous. This is a situation where the motives of the government (which, of course, are going to be suspect at the best of times) don't matter in the least because the competency of the people who make up the government ensures that this is a "very bad idea"(tm).
How much? I want one!
Ok, I can't afford it, whatever it costs, but I still want one!
I think, at 70%, Apple more than pays for the right to sell the songs. Music companies don't want to pay that additional hike to copyright holders? Tough. They're making 70% off each sale - they make more than enough to pay the additional fee. Greedy pricks.
The smell has been variously described as "new car smell", "musty", "rotting carpet" and even cannabis.
So, computer geeks smelled something musty, rotting, or something similar to pot. Uh, that's nothing new. They probably just need to clean up their rooms and smoke outside.
Apple didn't "a developer submitted program that was deemed competitive with Apple's product" - the did not approve an app that they felt had no difference from an existing, core application. Releasing an app, for profit, that does the exact same thing as an existing core app _should_ result in it not being approved. Something tells me that Lotus is quite dramatically different from the core apps on the iPhone which is why it was approved. Had the other developer actually _developed_ a mail app, with different features and functionality, it would have been approved.
Is it too much to ask for submission summaries that aren't so blatantly biased and inaccurate?
You have to love it when a common joke on Slashdot - that of patenting the process of patenting ideas - has finally come to pass. Reality has become a joke when a joke becomes reality.
Are we seriously considering a bar code scanner a "kiler app"? To me, a killer app is one which makes you absolutely want it, even if it means making a different hardware decision. You know, like how Halo is a killer app for XBox. A barcode scanner might be neat or even nifty and, to some rare individuals, it might be an absolutely killer app, but for the majority of people I see it being nothing more than a novelty app - something that's cool to have and you use from time to time but, most of the time, you forget you even have it.
Then again, maybe the poster is using "killer app" in a different way than I would...
Some would contend (and I have difficulty disagreeing) that, in 2000, 269 votes still wouldn't have given us President Gore - it would have just given us 269 more rejected ballots...
Actually, here's a more complete reply to your post.
... is an orwellian police state where everything you do on it is carefully censored and controlled by Apple.
The Iphone...
iPhone. See my earlier post.
Melodramatic much?
Certainly i would never use one.
You and millions of other people. Some for the same reason and others for a variety of other reasons. That's just the market exercising their right to choose. Congrats.
I wish Google or someone would come out with a phone which is based on a completely open OS like Linux and where people can write their own programs and so on for it.
You must be new here. Android. Look it up.
People often fear government as a threat to their freedom, but right here we see with Apple, an obvious violation of peoples rights to use a device that they purchased in a way they wish, and a corporation deciding what people can and cant use it for.
Ok, first, comparing Apple's controlling what apps are available for use on the iPhone with governments infringing people's freedoms? Seriously? I don't know if "melodramatic much" is adequate for that...
Second, iPhone purchasers can use the device however they want. They don't need to follow Apple's path. Just this week, iirc, it was announced that 2.1 was hacked allowing iPhone owners to install whatever apps they want. And when the next iPhone OS comes out, within a week or two, it'll be hacked as well. And so on and so on. iPhone owners can use the device however they want.
This leads in fact to stagnation, a lack of innovation.
Actually, the issue at hand is that the program in question mimicked Mail too closely without any notable differences. _THAT_ is stagnation and lack of innovation and it has nothing to do with Apple not approving applications. Had the app in question been a mail program with features that differentiated it from Mail, it surely would have been approved. But more on this later.
Many interesting developments and innovations come from innovation and improving and tinkering with an existing platform.
You mean like the efforts of the iPhone hacking team (sorry, I don't know if the team has an official name)? You mean like the efforts of the many, many, many iPhone app developers who have made some truly excellent apps already (check out Trism as but one example of a spectacular and innovative app that takes full use of the iPhone's abilities). Interesting developments and innovations surround the iPhone. And more will come as people push the limits of it's capabilities.
A platform that allows a person to develop software provides excellent conditions for new innovations, like new games or mail apps to be developed.
Um, people can develop apps for the iPhone. Apple doesn't need to approve all those apps (as they make clear in their documentation for developers), but people can develop apps for the device. There are already plenty of apps on the iPhone. Over a million have been downloaded already. Your point is a non-issue.
It sounds like the app was not approved because it was basically a carbon copy of Mail - same functions with no additional, differentiating features. So, if they approved it, people would buy the app, download it, realize they got duped into buying something that comes with the iPhone OS, get pissed and complain - the later two being things Apple wants to avoid. Rather than go that route, they did not approve the app. Had the developer actually developed something - spent some time and effort adding additional features that made the app different (and probably better) than Mail - Apple almost certainly would have approved it.
How posts like yours get modded up are beyond me. Melodramatic drivel alongside false information. Normally Slashdot reviewers get it right but sometimes they just miss the boat...
The Iphone is an orwellian police state where everything you do on it is carefully censored and controlled by Apple.
Wow. Melodramatic much? How about you just cut to the quick and drop a reference to Nazis or Hitler so we can be done with this thread right off the bat...
Oh, and for the record, it's "iPhone" - lower case "i", upper case "p". If you're going to claim it's the next biggest evil of technology, at least spell it correctly.
You make it sound like $150k in punitive damages is outrageous. What if this guy sold 1000 copies of the $60 game? Is 3x his illegal income outrageous? Ok, sure, he probably didn't sell the games for full price. Probably something like $20. And, with the internet, he could have sold 10,000 copies (or more...). So, he pulls in $200k, most of which would be profit, and he's sued for punitive damages of $150k. Does that seem outrageous? Actually, it does, but not in the way you seem to suggest...
The story doesn't state it explicitly, but my assumption is this was piracy-for-profit (making copies of the games and distributing them for a price) and thus the person deserves to be sued for the amount the law permits. Absolutely. I don't think my "period" comes too soon in the least. Piracy-for-profit deserves to be punished. Always. Period.
The idea is that it's meant to put the plaintiff in the position they would have been in had the action not occurred.
What ever gave you that (incorrect) idea? Seriously? They're called punitive damages for a reason. Here - I'll make it easy for you and not even link to Wikipedia - I'll just post the definition for you.
Punitive damages (termed exemplary damages in the United Kingdom) are damages not awarded in order to compensate the plaintiff, but in order to reform or deter the defendant and similar persons from pursuing a course of action such as that which damaged the plaintiff.
The point is to _PUNISH_ the offender sufficiently that they are discouraged from the act. It has nothing to do with putting the plaintiff into the position they'd have been in had the act never happened. It's a PUNISHMENT to the offender intended to discourage them from committing the offense in the first place.
The programmers and others will see the money in their continued paychecks as they strive to find their next big success. If Activision wins the lawsuit(s), that money doesn't go straight into some executive's pocket - it goes into the company's coffers in the same way that each game's sale does. So, yes, the programmers and others _will_ see that money.
Also, I assume the people being sued aren't being sued for making a copy of the game - they're being sued for copying _and selling_ the game(s). The damages have been well established for that sort of conduct. They deserve to be sued (if I'm correct in my assumption that they are pirates-for-profit).
If it's not related to file sharing and, presumably, is targeting people who make copies _for sale_, then good - they should be sued. As soon as you make a profit from someone else's copyrighted work, without their permission, you don't have a hint of a leg to stand on. You deserve to be sued and, hopefully, the copyright holder will win. You can make whatever argument you want about it being acceptable but, as soon as you turned a profit from the piracy, every argument you make is false. You're a crook and deserve to be punished. Period.