The article is good because it questions established lawyers, though one should still follow one's own lawyer's advice if one feels they are well served to do so.
Wow, such bold statements, all made without putting her own money on the line thanks to the IANAL disclaimer. Look, when she is ready to put her business in jeopardy, not just everyone else's, I'll take her seriously. Until then she has as much credibility as any random person posting things on the interweb.
Lets see, financial stability approaches zero. Quality control approaches zero. Customer support approaches zero. What was the last major PC game project to come out without a publisher? Oh yeah. Steam. Roger that.
Again, the advice is from someone admitting to not be a lawyer and seeking to contradict actual lawyers. If my boss took that advice he would truly be an idiot. Please, can someone show me the value?
From the top of the site: IANAL. I am a paralegal, so if you have a legal problem
and want advice, this isn't the place.
From the first paragraph: -- a lot of people don't understand the GPL, including some lawyers --
That's the best she can do? So what if I call my lawyer and he says she is wrong? Am I supposed to believe her or not? Who is this person that seeks to contradict professionals, yet will not put herself on the line in doing so? I don't need to read any further than that. Get some credibility and some courage and call me back. If you believe your words are true, stand behind them. Show some sack and put yourself and your name on the line.
Hey good stories, and a nice appeal to pity to boot. I don't feel sorry for you; I don't even believe you. But you can keep trying to scare people if it gains you some irrelevent online support.
Well if you knew a guy who knew a guy who told a story in high school...IT MUST BE TRUE! Thanks for the anecdote.
As for the city hall, I don't have a problem with that either. Whats the difference between requiring a photo ID and a full search at the door to the city hall? This is common in major metropolis' now. I'm supposed to be worried about someone taking my picture at that point? I cower in fear.
It does happen that a child will be abducted by a parent who, for one reason or another, does not have legal custody. Because the child is with someone who is their parent, they will not necessarily know that something is wrong, apart from what lie the abductor told them and that they might have no reason not to believe. They could be moved to another state or country, sent to school, and go about their life. They would still be "missing", and could still be in danger.
Though I haven't played Need for Speed, I'll work with the notion that what you are saying is true, that one must have those programs on your gaming system for all of the game's features to work. So are you already running Windows? If so, there is a 99% chance that those programs came installed on your system. Its not that you don't want to "install" them, its that you don't want to have them installed and you removed them. In this case, this is not a closed source problem OR a Windows problem, this is a Personal Problem. You made the choice to make your system incompatible (or desire to do such). This is where Windows, not a philosophy of closed vs. open, actually has the upper hand. Windows is less of an OS and is really a platform. I can develop multimedia software for Windows knowing the end user has 1. DirectX, 2.IE, and 3. WMP. The end-user can acquire new multimedia software based on this platform and be assured that it will A. run out of the box or B. run after a single call to a corporate customer service department. This forms a closed circle of consumer trust and developer willingness. In summary, this could be a problem with either closed or open source, but in fact it is not a problem with Windows as your example implies.
Working from the other case of you not having Windows installed and running in some sort of compatability mode or emulator...it must have said Windows required on the bottom of the box so I would not pity you there if it doesn't work.
As a resident of Cerritos for 24 years, let me provide some background information on the town:
Cerritos is located in the southeast corner of Los Angeles county, just north of Long Beach. The 605(N/S) and 91(E/W) intersect in the northwest corner of town providing incredible freeway access to residents and visitors. Cerritos has borders with the Orange County cities of La Palma and Buena Park, and is 15 minutes from many beaches, so living there provides one an interesting mix of influences from different urban and suburban cultures. I called it a town, there are about 50k residents so I'm not sure what that makes it technically. Cerritos has ended up becoming, IMHO, an interesting oasis in Southeast LA since the decline of the surrounding areas of Compton, Paramount, Lynwood, and the East LA area.
Greater Los Angeles area residents will surely have heard of the huge Cerritos Auto Square, an early entry into the auto mall type setup (I've heard the first of its kind?). The city also has hosted a mall since early on, the town of only 50k now supports as many as 3 malls, 1 classic mall and 2 major "Town Centre" type establishments. They city subsidized the building of a Sheraton hotel and performance arts center, with the classic motive if you build it they will come. (They have, supporting the brand new commercial complex). The city routinely takes pro-business steps such as this network and the city is remarkably prosperous because of it. The city has a HUGE library of its own, which it just recently upgraded, its own sheriff's station, water utility, 2 high schools, pretty much no service is contracted out to another jurisdiction.
Now, specifically to this story:
SOME residents of Cerritos have been able to get DSL for years. I know, I had it. The DSL service is capped at 768/128 due to the type of network in place, not distance. This was a major fight I had with Verizon, I lost but was actually satisfied with their explanation, remarkably. The cable has remained analog, however. Verizon was also the cable provider.
If I understand the local news correctly, Verizon has lost the cable contract and this new company is coming it. They will be setting up the citywide network and running the cable system. Presumably, they will be securing it themselves since they will be charging for access, so all this security talk is really nonsense at this point. Of course, and home relays could be insecure, but this is nothing new. The city is benefiting since all government agencies (see above about no outsourcing) will now have access through this system. The people benefit from this anywhere in the city access, especially those for whom broadband has been unavailable.
This probably sounded like a big commercial, but I don't care. I do recommend it as a great place to raise a family. I just moved to Long Beach to be 2 blocks from the shore, but I would go back in a second if the LBC sunk into the ocean.
Are you trying to draw me out so I lose karma? You've got to understand I don't care. You seem to however, and I find that interesting.
Since you asked, "Owned" was the quickest, most to the point statement about what happened to Rockstar. They sold out not only themselves, but the entire case for games as art by not backing up their freedom of speech rights and caving to a small time politician and some micro special interest group. Of course, as usual you don't understand the issue at hand, and couldn't see how that simple statement summed it up perfectly with no wasted time or calories.
Now, interestingly, +1 Funny doesn't go to karma, so either way that moderation does nothing but prove how the small group who routinely posts in the Games section has too much power. I bet you used your normal account to mod yourself Funny and then mod my reply down? Hey, good for you.
And I thought you weren't going to read my tripe anymore. I told you a long time ago, I'm not going on a date with you and you can't come to my house anymore. You really should move on.
Quite the closed circle you've created for yourself there. So no matter what, you aren't going to buy a game? I have a feeling you never did. What is their incentive to change? Or did you just prove them right, that they need to take steps to combat privacy? Your stance is counter-productive at best. Its posts like this that the industry points to and says, "See, we have to do these things, and we need more laws to protect our IP."
But come clean, you haven't purchased a game since 1998. Be honest.
I have no evidence to disbelieve all that you say, but I do have a couple questions about the choice of some of your phrasing...
Decline a grant of $36K in taxpayer's money that was offered to assist with my jet-engine development work -- I figured that those waiting for medical treatment or expecting a decent education could use the money more than me.
This jumped out at me right away as an appeal to pity/spin attempt/I don't know what. I question your true motivation for not accepting the money. 36k devided amongst the many school children in your nation surely would not go very far per student. A few pencils each maybe? Perhaps a computer lab for one school? It would seem to me that the real reason you would refuse government money is to prevent them from having any control of your project. Now I'm not saying anything is wrong with that, having complete control over one's own project is certainly desirable to any inventor/scientist/creator but if you seeked to hide this point, I have to wonder why, and to question your motivation in general because of it. Take it with a grain of salt if I'm way off, but do consider this is how it appears to the skeptical reader.
I also don't see how it is embarrassing to any government if an individual builds a missile. If you are invoking the terrorist implications, I would not fear this new device any more than a moving truck. Trucks have been shown to be quite effective when filled with the correct materials and parked in a suitable position for destruction. What, exactly, is embarrassing? No, I suspect there is other motivation for them going after your project. I would be willing to listen to any other theories you or anyone else has. The fact that you were doing it with permission? I don't understand.
And finally, as far as not knowing where the missile is, is that really the most responsible way to handle the situation? Wouldn't it be better to destroy the device? I have to assume plans still exist and a new missile could be easily constructed when conditions change for you, though the article indicates that is not your goal. But then if that is not your goal, why do you need this one any further? Your stated point seems proven. Not knowing where it is also does not instill in me the notion that you are doing whats right for "everyone". Perhaps this is just another bad PR move on your part, but this doesn't really add up to me the way it seems to for you. This is a potential weapon we are talking about, not a stash of cocaine.
At any rate, I appreciate your comments and if you choose to respond I hope you can see past what looks like personal attacks but is really just a skeptical view of your post and shed further light on the situation.
I dont think this was a surprise. But then, I'm on the expansion ladder, so maybe I'm bias as well. Turns out one can succeed with an elemental druid now.
I'm not even a big Star Wars fan, but I do know enough that to become a Jedi in the movies and previous games, the character would pretty much have to drop everything and become a Jedi. Family, profession, pretty much everything to train for that alone.
I mean, you don't have to become a Jedi, or even try to, thats still your choice.
If one of the QA Project Leads that works for me right now missed this bug, there would be serious questions.
But as my other 2 posts stated, I don't think they missed it. I think they knew and shipped anyway.
They shipped with a bug that they knew would cause their product to fail in 1 year. They did this because they felt noone would be playing Pokemon anymore, and the few that still are would be such rabid fanboys that they would do things like flame people who call them on it and mod them down. Well it looks like they were 99% right. Slashbots win again.
Why am I pissed? Because I was playing Pokemon Ruby not 5 days ago here at work and now I know that eventually it will not work properly. Teaches me a lesson about their products though. Have you learned anything?
1) The state of gaming is that it is more profitable to publish 3-5 major titles per year, and ship them cross-platform, than 10-15 titles. 2) The major title should be able to be enjoyed in very small bites (see Madden, THPS, and GTA) to appeal to the largest possible audience. Notice this is not a comment on the quality of these or any games, only on what the public has voted for with their dollars.
*The only exception to 1 and 2 is if you are EA and can land a major movie tie-in.
Please note that Black Isle games did not fit this description. That is all.
Actually, it is one hundred percent failure if this test was not performed. This is exactly why QA exists. This is such fundamental functionality it should be part of a checklist that would be completed with every new build.
To put it another way, if this test wasn't done, the test lead should be fired. His test plan failed.
Personally, I'm still of the opinion that they knew of this bug and shipped anyway...
Nonsense. This is exactly the type of bug the QA team should be looking for. It IS possible for them to adjust the time to their whim because they (both the developer and test team) would be doing early testing on an emulator. A debug tool would be provided to allow them to change many features of the game, instantly give items, basically anything a game shark type device can do, and more.
Does the whole of the slashdot crowd here actually believe they didn't know about this bug? This is quite an obvious thing to test. They must have tried advancing the year at least once.
This is a major failure. Either their development and test teams are ENTIRELY incompetent or they knowingly released the game with this bug. Which do you believe?
P.S. Any feature ceasing to function entirely should be a showstopper.
Hey I made your journal! Sweet! And who is worried about who too much? Do you yet care to address my point or are you only interested in attacking me? I responded to the only post that sought to add information to this thread, yet you have not replied. Your nature is clearer than ever my friend. Well done.
Slashdot Mirror
So if I may boil your point down one more time...
The article is good because it questions established lawyers, though one should still follow one's own lawyer's advice if one feels they are well served to do so.
Wow, such bold statements, all made without putting her own money on the line thanks to the IANAL disclaimer. Look, when she is ready to put her business in jeopardy, not just everyone else's, I'll take her seriously. Until then she has as much credibility as any random person posting things on the interweb.
Did I accidently type fark instead of slashdot this morning?
I didn't name them, she brought them up. If there are no lawyers to contradict, why write the piece?
Lets see, financial stability approaches zero. Quality control approaches zero. Customer support approaches zero. What was the last major PC game project to come out without a publisher? Oh yeah. Steam. Roger that.
Again, the advice is from someone admitting to not be a lawyer and seeking to contradict actual lawyers. If my boss took that advice he would truly be an idiot. Please, can someone show me the value?
So then whats the point of the advice if it is not legal advice? What is it worth?
All she puts is "trust" on the line, while she asks others to put their money. Roger that.
From the top of the site:
IANAL. I am a paralegal, so if you have a legal problem and want advice, this isn't the place.
From the first paragraph:
-- a lot of people don't understand the GPL, including some lawyers --
That's the best she can do? So what if I call my lawyer and he says she is wrong? Am I supposed to believe her or not? Who is this person that seeks to contradict professionals, yet will not put herself on the line in doing so? I don't need to read any further than that. Get some credibility and some courage and call me back. If you believe your words are true, stand behind them. Show some sack and put yourself and your name on the line.
Hey good stories, and a nice appeal to pity to boot. I don't feel sorry for you; I don't even believe you. But you can keep trying to scare people if it gains you some irrelevent online support.
Once again Mike Hawk proves to be a prophet. But hey, it might have been an accident.
"A kid I knew in highschool..."
Well if you knew a guy who knew a guy who told a story in high school...IT MUST BE TRUE! Thanks for the anecdote.
As for the city hall, I don't have a problem with that either. Whats the difference between requiring a photo ID and a full search at the door to the city hall? This is common in major metropolis' now. I'm supposed to be worried about someone taking my picture at that point? I cower in fear.
Wow, sheltered much?
It does happen that a child will be abducted by a parent who, for one reason or another, does not have legal custody. Because the child is with someone who is their parent, they will not necessarily know that something is wrong, apart from what lie the abductor told them and that they might have no reason not to believe. They could be moved to another state or country, sent to school, and go about their life. They would still be "missing", and could still be in danger.
Interesting comparison...
Though I haven't played Need for Speed, I'll work with the notion that what you are saying is true, that one must have those programs on your gaming system for all of the game's features to work. So are you already running Windows? If so, there is a 99% chance that those programs came installed on your system. Its not that you don't want to "install" them, its that you don't want to have them installed and you removed them. In this case, this is not a closed source problem OR a Windows problem, this is a Personal Problem. You made the choice to make your system incompatible (or desire to do such). This is where Windows, not a philosophy of closed vs. open, actually has the upper hand. Windows is less of an OS and is really a platform. I can develop multimedia software for Windows knowing the end user has 1. DirectX, 2.IE, and 3. WMP. The end-user can acquire new multimedia software based on this platform and be assured that it will A. run out of the box or B. run after a single call to a corporate customer service department. This forms a closed circle of consumer trust and developer willingness. In summary, this could be a problem with either closed or open source, but in fact it is not a problem with Windows as your example implies.
Working from the other case of you not having Windows installed and running in some sort of compatability mode or emulator...it must have said Windows required on the bottom of the box so I would not pity you there if it doesn't work.
As a resident of Cerritos for 24 years, let me provide some background information on the town:
Cerritos is located in the southeast corner of Los Angeles county, just north of Long Beach. The 605(N/S) and 91(E/W) intersect in the northwest corner of town providing incredible freeway access to residents and visitors. Cerritos has borders with the Orange County cities of La Palma and Buena Park, and is 15 minutes from many beaches, so living there provides one an interesting mix of influences from different urban and suburban cultures. I called it a town, there are about 50k residents so I'm not sure what that makes it technically. Cerritos has ended up becoming, IMHO, an interesting oasis in Southeast LA since the decline of the surrounding areas of Compton, Paramount, Lynwood, and the East LA area.
Greater Los Angeles area residents will surely have heard of the huge Cerritos Auto Square, an early entry into the auto mall type setup (I've heard the first of its kind?). The city also has hosted a mall since early on, the town of only 50k now supports as many as 3 malls, 1 classic mall and 2 major "Town Centre" type establishments. They city subsidized the building of a Sheraton hotel and performance arts center, with the classic motive if you build it they will come. (They have, supporting the brand new commercial complex). The city routinely takes pro-business steps such as this network and the city is remarkably prosperous because of it. The city has a HUGE library of its own, which it just recently upgraded, its own sheriff's station, water utility, 2 high schools, pretty much no service is contracted out to another jurisdiction.
Now, specifically to this story:
SOME residents of Cerritos have been able to get DSL for years. I know, I had it. The DSL service is capped at 768/128 due to the type of network in place, not distance. This was a major fight I had with Verizon, I lost but was actually satisfied with their explanation, remarkably. The cable has remained analog, however. Verizon was also the cable provider.
If I understand the local news correctly, Verizon has lost the cable contract and this new company is coming it. They will be setting up the citywide network and running the cable system. Presumably, they will be securing it themselves since they will be charging for access, so all this security talk is really nonsense at this point. Of course, and home relays could be insecure, but this is nothing new. The city is benefiting since all government agencies (see above about no outsourcing) will now have access through this system. The people benefit from this anywhere in the city access, especially those for whom broadband has been unavailable.
This probably sounded like a big commercial, but I don't care. I do recommend it as a great place to raise a family. I just moved to Long Beach to be 2 blocks from the shore, but I would go back in a second if the LBC sunk into the ocean.
Are you trying to draw me out so I lose karma? You've got to understand I don't care. You seem to however, and I find that interesting.
Since you asked, "Owned" was the quickest, most to the point statement about what happened to Rockstar. They sold out not only themselves, but the entire case for games as art by not backing up their freedom of speech rights and caving to a small time politician and some micro special interest group. Of course, as usual you don't understand the issue at hand, and couldn't see how that simple statement summed it up perfectly with no wasted time or calories.
Now, interestingly, +1 Funny doesn't go to karma, so either way that moderation does nothing but prove how the small group who routinely posts in the Games section has too much power. I bet you used your normal account to mod yourself Funny and then mod my reply down? Hey, good for you.
And I thought you weren't going to read my tripe anymore. I told you a long time ago, I'm not going on a date with you and you can't come to my house anymore. You really should move on.
Quite the closed circle you've created for yourself there. So no matter what, you aren't going to buy a game? I have a feeling you never did. What is their incentive to change? Or did you just prove them right, that they need to take steps to combat privacy? Your stance is counter-productive at best. Its posts like this that the industry points to and says, "See, we have to do these things, and we need more laws to protect our IP."
But come clean, you haven't purchased a game since 1998. Be honest.
If I was going for first post I would remember. Though I see you still haven't figured out how to log in in the first place.
Just goes to my point that the games section is too juvenile to properly utilize the moderation system.
Owned.
I have no evidence to disbelieve all that you say, but I do have a couple questions about the choice of some of your phrasing...
Decline a grant of $36K in taxpayer's money that was offered to assist with my jet-engine development work -- I figured that those waiting for medical treatment or expecting a decent education could use the money more than me.
This jumped out at me right away as an appeal to pity/spin attempt/I don't know what. I question your true motivation for not accepting the money. 36k devided amongst the many school children in your nation surely would not go very far per student. A few pencils each maybe? Perhaps a computer lab for one school? It would seem to me that the real reason you would refuse government money is to prevent them from having any control of your project. Now I'm not saying anything is wrong with that, having complete control over one's own project is certainly desirable to any inventor/scientist/creator but if you seeked to hide this point, I have to wonder why, and to question your motivation in general because of it. Take it with a grain of salt if I'm way off, but do consider this is how it appears to the skeptical reader.
I also don't see how it is embarrassing to any government if an individual builds a missile. If you are invoking the terrorist implications, I would not fear this new device any more than a moving truck. Trucks have been shown to be quite effective when filled with the correct materials and parked in a suitable position for destruction. What, exactly, is embarrassing? No, I suspect there is other motivation for them going after your project. I would be willing to listen to any other theories you or anyone else has. The fact that you were doing it with permission? I don't understand.
And finally, as far as not knowing where the missile is, is that really the most responsible way to handle the situation? Wouldn't it be better to destroy the device? I have to assume plans still exist and a new missile could be easily constructed when conditions change for you, though the article indicates that is not your goal. But then if that is not your goal, why do you need this one any further? Your stated point seems proven. Not knowing where it is also does not instill in me the notion that you are doing whats right for "everyone". Perhaps this is just another bad PR move on your part, but this doesn't really add up to me the way it seems to for you. This is a potential weapon we are talking about, not a stash of cocaine.
At any rate, I appreciate your comments and if you choose to respond I hope you can see past what looks like personal attacks but is really just a skeptical view of your post and shed further light on the situation.
Its just you.
Yes it made the game harder.
Yes it changed many things.
I dont think this was a surprise. But then, I'm on the expansion ladder, so maybe I'm bias as well. Turns out one can succeed with an elemental druid now.
I'm not even a big Star Wars fan, but I do know enough that to become a Jedi in the movies and previous games, the character would pretty much have to drop everything and become a Jedi. Family, profession, pretty much everything to train for that alone.
I mean, you don't have to become a Jedi, or even try to, thats still your choice.
I'll say it once more for the slow witted.
If one of the QA Project Leads that works for me right now missed this bug, there would be serious questions.
But as my other 2 posts stated, I don't think they missed it. I think they knew and shipped anyway.
They shipped with a bug that they knew would cause their product to fail in 1 year. They did this because they felt noone would be playing Pokemon anymore, and the few that still are would be such rabid fanboys that they would do things like flame people who call them on it and mod them down. Well it looks like they were 99% right. Slashbots win again.
Why am I pissed? Because I was playing Pokemon Ruby not 5 days ago here at work and now I know that eventually it will not work properly. Teaches me a lesson about their products though. Have you learned anything?
This is very simple, please try to keep up.
1) The state of gaming is that it is more profitable to publish 3-5 major titles per year, and ship them cross-platform, than 10-15 titles.
2) The major title should be able to be enjoyed in very small bites (see Madden, THPS, and GTA) to appeal to the largest possible audience. Notice this is not a comment on the quality of these or any games, only on what the public has voted for with their dollars.
*The only exception to 1 and 2 is if you are EA and can land a major movie tie-in.
Please note that Black Isle games did not fit this description. That is all.
Actually, it is one hundred percent failure if this test was not performed. This is exactly why QA exists. This is such fundamental functionality it should be part of a checklist that would be completed with every new build.
To put it another way, if this test wasn't done, the test lead should be fired. His test plan failed.
Personally, I'm still of the opinion that they knew of this bug and shipped anyway...
Nonsense. This is exactly the type of bug the QA team should be looking for. It IS possible for them to adjust the time to their whim because they (both the developer and test team) would be doing early testing on an emulator. A debug tool would be provided to allow them to change many features of the game, instantly give items, basically anything a game shark type device can do, and more.
Does the whole of the slashdot crowd here actually believe they didn't know about this bug? This is quite an obvious thing to test. They must have tried advancing the year at least once.
This is a major failure. Either their development and test teams are ENTIRELY incompetent or they knowingly released the game with this bug. Which do you believe?
P.S. Any feature ceasing to function entirely should be a showstopper.
Hey I made your journal! Sweet! And who is worried about who too much? Do you yet care to address my point or are you only interested in attacking me? I responded to the only post that sought to add information to this thread, yet you have not replied. Your nature is clearer than ever my friend. Well done.