My wife suffered a stroke last year that left her without the use of her left arm. She has been able to play SW:TOR and WoW using this setup (Razer Naga + foot pedal). She doesn't play PvP, but is able to play PvE at a fairly high level (can raid, run 5 mans well, etc). She's able to play games like Diablo3 and Torchlight2 with just the mouse (no foot pedal needed). By far the hardest thing so far has been trying to play FPS games like Borderlands. It's doable, but at least thus far not at the level she was used to.
But, assuming you have one good arm and one good leg, you should find that you can do almost anything you want with the setup described.
Given modern interpretations of the commerce clause, it's doubtful that the "intellectual property clause" that you quote in any way limits Congress' ability to legislate in this area. Congress can pass IP laws under their commerce clause power without having to worry about the limiting language in the IP clause.
For example, it's not at all clear what the constitutional authority for the DMCA is, but the legislative history shows that one draft cited the IP clause as the constitutional authority, and another cited the commerce clause. The final version didn't state what the authority was.
This is a common misconception. See ProCD v. Zeidenberg, 86 F.3d 1447 (7th Cir., 1996) (holding a "shrinkwrap" agreement enforceable). In truth, courts aren't likely to treat shrinkwrap agreements all that differently than written agreements that people don't read but agree to anyways (think those multi-page releases that people only glance at before signing). They will generally be held enforceable unless they contain provisions that are unconscionable, grossly unfair, or completely unexpected. It doesn't appear that any of those types of issues would apply to the agreement here.
(I am not a lawyer, I am certainly not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice. If you need legal advice, hire a lawyer certified to practice in your jurisdiction)
You have a right to copy the program into RAM in order to run it, if that copy is going to be used for a purpose that complies with the EULA.
However, here the programmer is using the program in a way that doesn't comply with the EULA. Therefore, he is not only violating the EULA, but also their copyright, because he is making a copy for an unauthorized purpose.
AC2 was pretty ambitious but for some reason - and I'm not 100% sure why - it failed. Very pretty game. I'm going to have to assume based on this comment that you didn't acutally play the game? The first 5 months of it's retail release it was an Alpha quality product. There were huge bugs in every aspect of the game. Chat didn't work most of the time. Mobs (and players) constantly got stuck on terrain. There were practically no quests. There was practically no content of any kind really. The crafting system was a joke. Leveling a character was about repeating the two or three quests available at your level range, and trying to get high level group mobs stuck on terrain so you could kill em easy.
Yeah it was pretty. It was also empty. And broken.
Six months after it's release they finally got it working to a standard that it was a decent beta. There still wasn't enough content, but at least it was somewhat stable, and most of the game breaking bugs had been removed. Chat still didn't work (they blamed Mircosoft Passport for this). But who wants to be paying a monthly fee to play an unfinished beta product? It was so bad, my friends and I vowed never to play a Turbne MMORPG again. One of my friends was tempted to pick up LOTRO recently, and the rest of us had to hold him down and beat him about the head until he regained his senses. I'm only slightly exagerating here.
I don't dispute your claim that the RIAA is only interested in the spirit of the law when it benefits them. I view most of their current law suits as a clear abuse of the adversarial legal system.
That point conceded, just because they do it doesn't make it okay for everyone else to do it also. There is no "Whhhaaaa Mommy, they did it first" clause in the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure.
I am not a lawyer and this is not legal advice
I doubt it's possible to dislike the RIAA or these lawsuits more than I do. I think overall the RIAA and MPAA represent an assault against cultural progress and preservation, by seeking to destroy the public domain and make distribution and archiving of even unprofitable works illegal.
That said, if you don't want an potential litigant to contact you at work, don't actively avoid service at your home. It does not help your case. Few things annoy a judge more than playing games with the requirements for service. Personal service requirements are a constitutional protection to guarantee that people aren't being brought to court without getting notice to defend your self. It is serious business, and courts take it seriously. They don't like it when a person who obviously already has actual notice of a pending subpoena plays games with the system.
Given the apparent circumstances, the RIAA and their lawyers were well within their bounds to attempt service at his place of employment. If he didn't want to be served there, then he should have accepted any of the previous seven valid attempts to effect service at his house.
Quoting from the footnotes:
Well, actually I can't quote from the letter, because it's/.'d but it basically says "we tried to serve him at home 7 times, and we kept getting lame stories, including being told the person we were talking to was actually the person's father, who's been dead for 4 years."
Bottom line. Don't play games with process servers. They've got a job to do, and they're going to do it. The harder you make it on them, the harder they'll make it on you.
Yeah, I posted the link to the Triton ATM Manual because it was the first one that came up in a search for "arm operator manual". The specific one they were talking about last week also came up, but later in the search.
I don't know what his was, but the one I used was:
atm operator manual
It returned a fair number of, well, ATM Operator Manuals in.pdf format. Most seemed to include the default master operator password. Took me about 3 minutes.
It could have 48 channel surround-sound and automatically hire the remaining members of Beatles to perform live in my living room whenever I try to play the White Album and it'd not be worth it. It could snuggle up to me every morning to wake me up with a cup of fresh coffee and a blowjob and it'd still not be worth it.
If you won't pay $600 for that, you won't pay $600 for anything. Hell, for that kind of service you could charge admission just to let people watch and make the $600 bucks back. The Beatles, or The BJ's, either one. Both?
One could easily argue that the real innovation of the Industrial Revolution was the moral shift that slavery was wrong. Without access to nearly free or cheap slave labor, the need for motive force from a source other than human muscle was greatly increased.
There was no use for a steam engine in Greek society, because there was no significant moral objection to the use of slave labor, which kept cheap manual labor in nearly unlimited supply.
Betamax was NOT superior
This is a persistent myth that has gone on for decades
but it was certainly not a superior format, at least IMHO
(Emphasis Mine)
I just want you to know how much I appreciate that you blatantly contradicted yourself within 3 sentences (counting the title.) It saves so much reading when fools make the effort to out themselves early, and I applaud you for the courtesy.
What an assinine post.
So because he choose to include the too often used expression "IMHO" in his post the entire thing can somehow be discounted? Here's a little information for you. Almost ALL posts are opinion. They sometimes cite facts, or contain references to facts, but the conclusions drawn from those facts are opinion. The GP's assertion that Beta was not superior, and that this common perception is a myth is his opinion. He then goes on to support his opinion by citing several relavent facts. This is a common method for constructing an argument, and one that you should be familiar with. Claim > Support > Summary
He need not have included the IMHO in order for us to ascertain that it was his opinion, as it should be obvious to the reader. My english teacher used to doc points from anyone that included "In my opinion" in an essay as the statement is usually redundant. Generealy speaking it should only be used to clarify to the reader when we've stopped citing facts and gone back to making supposition.
The GP did not in fact contradict himself in the opening three lines. He stated two opinions, and then unnecesarily reminded his readers that this was his opinion. Criticize his writing style if you like, but claiming he's a fool or that he's contradicted himself is an incorrect assesment.
New York officials also annouced plans to close public parks to anyone under 18. They made this decision after realizing that child predators know that children like to play unsupervised in parks. When asked about this decision, officals replied "We need to be vigilant to protect our children."
The answers that were posted give a far more acurate description of Blizzard as a company than anything else could have. It shows them for what they are, a huge corporation, run my the marketing department, who can't be bothered to address legitimate questions from either it's current or potential customer base. Had the editors not bothered to publish their responses we'd have been deprived of seeing this excellent example of what Blizzard thinks of their target audience and the amount of time they deem worth devoting to them. Personally I'm glad they put this right up on the front page where every/. reader will see it. Maybe if it generates enough bad press they'll get a real response.
Didn't I read this same story about Walkman's 20 years ago? And didn't they decide the effects were negligable? Oh yeah I did. Abstract from a study in 1987:
Krahenbuhl D, Arnold W, Fried R, Chuden H.
Investigations on 50 high school students showed that this group had been using the "Walkman" only 1.5 h. per day during the last 14 months. A comparison of the audiometric results obtained with these 50 "Walkman" users, with those of 20 age-related non-"Walkman" users, showed no statistically significant differences. The investigation further revealed that to avoid hearing loss, an upper threshold level of 93 dB (A) should not be exceeded for a daily "Walkman" user time of two hours.
PMID: 3613781 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]
Again, the *only* conclusion of the Cogito is "Sum". The only assumption of the Cogito is "Cogito". It's not I think, and there's a God, therefore I am. And it's not "I think, therefore I am, and there's a god".
Once "Sum" was proven he used that as a basis to go on to try to prove other points, such as the existance of a world outside the mind and the existance of a supreme being. However, these are seperate arguments, and are not part of the Cogito itself. The validity of those arguments is still debated today, but every philosopher I'm aware of excepts the Cogito as Truth. At this point, we're probably just arguing semantics, with me only refering the original three words, and with you refering to all of the subsequent arguments he tried to derive from there.
Where is "Cogito ergo sum" is the assumption of a higher power? All DesCartes is trying to do is prove his own existance to himself.
There is only one argument there, "Cogito" or "I think". From this, he draws one conclusion "Sum" or "I am".
There are no other assumptions made, the entire argument is self contained and three words long.
I don't see why a religious concept can't be explored in a philosophy class.
Coming from someone who claims to have taken a philosophy class but can't even understand the Cogito, one of the most basic arguments in philosophy, that statement shouldn't suprise me. You'd probably be surprised to learn that most major universities still have a Theology or Religious Studies department, and that this department is generally quite seperate from the Philosophy department. Let's leave the religious arguments (like ID) in the religion classes. Then we can leave the philosophy students to study philosophy and learn why ID is such a poorly devised argument.
It wasn't a window, it was a window cover. It's a device designed to protect the window from damage while it's sitting on the launch pad. It's supposed to come off (though not fall off) prior to launch. The fact that it fell off prematurely really isn't a big deal, the fact that the fall damaged some tiles on the shuttle's exterior is. However, they were able to remove the damaged section and replace it so this is really no longer an issue.
Of course gamers first bitch about how patches are never released in a timely fashion
Sorry, but that's not what I hear gamers saying, and it's definately not what the submitted said. What I hear gamers bitch about are games that are rushed out and *NEED* to be patched quickly because they are so damn buggy. In this case, they took a game that had been rushed out and needed a patch, then rushed out a patch. They took the game from "buggy but playable" to "nearly unplayable".
Frankly, people like you are a all too willing to shell out money for a buggy game "so I can play it early with support" are what screw the rest of us over. You seem to disparage Blizzard's practice of missing deadlines in order to release a better product when that's exactly what the rest of the industry should be doing.
No, as Justice O'Connor said in her dissent, it would have been upholding the 'Public Use' clause of the Constitution.
For what it's worth, I agree that if you want to see change to ED law now the way to do it is through state law. Not because that's what the constitution says, but becuase that's the only tool the SCOTUS left us.
Slashdot Mirror
My wife suffered a stroke last year that left her without the use of her left arm. She has been able to play SW:TOR and WoW using this setup (Razer Naga + foot pedal). She doesn't play PvP, but is able to play PvE at a fairly high level (can raid, run 5 mans well, etc). She's able to play games like Diablo3 and Torchlight2 with just the mouse (no foot pedal needed). By far the hardest thing so far has been trying to play FPS games like Borderlands. It's doable, but at least thus far not at the level she was used to. But, assuming you have one good arm and one good leg, you should find that you can do almost anything you want with the setup described.
Austin. Eastern District of Texas.
Given modern interpretations of the commerce clause, it's doubtful that the "intellectual property clause" that you quote in any way limits Congress' ability to legislate in this area. Congress can pass IP laws under their commerce clause power without having to worry about the limiting language in the IP clause.
For example, it's not at all clear what the constitutional authority for the DMCA is, but the legislative history shows that one draft cited the IP clause as the constitutional authority, and another cited the commerce clause. The final version didn't state what the authority was.
Shrinkwrap EULAs haven't been ruled enforceable
This is a common misconception. See ProCD v. Zeidenberg, 86 F.3d 1447 (7th Cir., 1996) (holding a "shrinkwrap" agreement enforceable). In truth, courts aren't likely to treat shrinkwrap agreements all that differently than written agreements that people don't read but agree to anyways (think those multi-page releases that people only glance at before signing). They will generally be held enforceable unless they contain provisions that are unconscionable, grossly unfair, or completely unexpected. It doesn't appear that any of those types of issues would apply to the agreement here. (I am not a lawyer, I am certainly not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice. If you need legal advice, hire a lawyer certified to practice in your jurisdiction)
I believe the argument would go like this:
You have a right to copy the program into RAM in order to run it, if that copy is going to be used for a purpose that complies with the EULA.
However, here the programmer is using the program in a way that doesn't comply with the EULA. Therefore, he is not only violating the EULA, but also their copyright, because he is making a copy for an unauthorized purpose.
I don't dispute your claim that the RIAA is only interested in the spirit of the law when it benefits them. I view most of their current law suits as a clear abuse of the adversarial legal system. That point conceded, just because they do it doesn't make it okay for everyone else to do it also. There is no "Whhhaaaa Mommy, they did it first" clause in the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. I am not a lawyer and this is not legal advice
I doubt it's possible to dislike the RIAA or these lawsuits more than I do. I think overall the RIAA and MPAA represent an assault against cultural progress and preservation, by seeking to destroy the public domain and make distribution and archiving of even unprofitable works illegal.
/.'d but it basically says "we tried to serve him at home 7 times, and we kept getting lame stories, including being told the person we were talking to was actually the person's father, who's been dead for 4 years."
Bottom line. Don't play games with process servers. They've got a job to do, and they're going to do it. The harder you make it on them, the harder they'll make it on you.
That said, if you don't want an potential litigant to contact you at work, don't actively avoid service at your home. It does not help your case. Few things annoy a judge more than playing games with the requirements for service. Personal service requirements are a constitutional protection to guarantee that people aren't being brought to court without getting notice to defend your self. It is serious business, and courts take it seriously. They don't like it when a person who obviously already has actual notice of a pending subpoena plays games with the system.
Given the apparent circumstances, the RIAA and their lawyers were well within their bounds to attempt service at his place of employment. If he didn't want to be served there, then he should have accepted any of the previous seven valid attempts to effect service at his house.
Quoting from the footnotes:
Well, actually I can't quote from the letter, because it's
Yeah, I posted the link to the Triton ATM Manual because it was the first one that came up in a search for "arm operator manual". The specific one they were talking about last week also came up, but later in the search.
I don't know what his was, but the one I used was:
.pdf format. Most seemed to include the default master operator password. Took me about 3 minutes.
atm operator manual
It returned a fair number of, well, ATM Operator Manuals in
Close. Actually it apears that it's 001234. http://www.tritonatm.com/en/service/manuals/07103- 00013C%20(FT5KUsrMan(3.0))file.pdf
It could have 48 channel surround-sound and automatically hire the remaining members of Beatles to perform live in my living room whenever I try to play the White Album and it'd not be worth it. It could snuggle up to me every morning to wake me up with a cup of fresh coffee and a blowjob and it'd still not be worth it.
If you won't pay $600 for that, you won't pay $600 for anything. Hell, for that kind of service you could charge admission just to let people watch and make the $600 bucks back. The Beatles, or The BJ's, either one. Both?
One could easily argue that the real innovation of the Industrial Revolution was the moral shift that slavery was wrong. Without access to nearly free or cheap slave labor, the need for motive force from a source other than human muscle was greatly increased.
There was no use for a steam engine in Greek society, because there was no significant moral objection to the use of slave labor, which kept cheap manual labor in nearly unlimited supply.
Betamax was NOT superior This is a persistent myth that has gone on for decades but it was certainly not a superior format, at least IMHO (Emphasis Mine) I just want you to know how much I appreciate that you blatantly contradicted yourself within 3 sentences (counting the title.) It saves so much reading when fools make the effort to out themselves early, and I applaud you for the courtesy.
What an assinine post.
So because he choose to include the too often used expression "IMHO" in his post the entire thing can somehow be discounted? Here's a little information for you. Almost ALL posts are opinion. They sometimes cite facts, or contain references to facts, but the conclusions drawn from those facts are opinion. The GP's assertion that Beta was not superior, and that this common perception is a myth is his opinion. He then goes on to support his opinion by citing several relavent facts. This is a common method for constructing an argument, and one that you should be familiar with. Claim > Support > Summary
He need not have included the IMHO in order for us to ascertain that it was his opinion, as it should be obvious to the reader. My english teacher used to doc points from anyone that included "In my opinion" in an essay as the statement is usually redundant. Generealy speaking it should only be used to clarify to the reader when we've stopped citing facts and gone back to making supposition.
The GP did not in fact contradict himself in the opening three lines. He stated two opinions, and then unnecesarily reminded his readers that this was his opinion. Criticize his writing style if you like, but claiming he's a fool or that he's contradicted himself is an incorrect assesment.
IMHO.
unable to sustain the population that they contain
Isn't that the definition of an "overpopulated" region?
New York officials also annouced plans to close public parks to anyone under 18. They made this decision after realizing that child predators know that children like to play unsupervised in parks. When asked about this decision, officals replied "We need to be vigilant to protect our children."
The answers that were posted give a far more acurate description of Blizzard as a company than anything else could have. It shows them for what they are, a huge corporation, run my the marketing department, who can't be bothered to address legitimate questions from either it's current or potential customer base. Had the editors not bothered to publish their responses we'd have been deprived of seeing this excellent example of what Blizzard thinks of their target audience and the amount of time they deem worth devoting to them. Personally I'm glad they put this right up on the front page where every /. reader will see it. Maybe if it generates enough bad press they'll get a real response.
Didn't I read this same story about Walkman's 20 years ago? And didn't they decide the effects were negligable? Oh yeah I did. Abstract from a study in 1987: Krahenbuhl D, Arnold W, Fried R, Chuden H. Investigations on 50 high school students showed that this group had been using the "Walkman" only 1.5 h. per day during the last 14 months. A comparison of the audiometric results obtained with these 50 "Walkman" users, with those of 20 age-related non-"Walkman" users, showed no statistically significant differences. The investigation further revealed that to avoid hearing loss, an upper threshold level of 93 dB (A) should not be exceeded for a daily "Walkman" user time of two hours. PMID: 3613781 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]
Again, the *only* conclusion of the Cogito is "Sum". The only assumption of the Cogito is "Cogito". It's not I think, and there's a God, therefore I am. And it's not "I think, therefore I am, and there's a god".
Once "Sum" was proven he used that as a basis to go on to try to prove other points, such as the existance of a world outside the mind and the existance of a supreme being. However, these are seperate arguments, and are not part of the Cogito itself. The validity of those arguments is still debated today, but every philosopher I'm aware of excepts the Cogito as Truth. At this point, we're probably just arguing semantics, with me only refering the original three words, and with you refering to all of the subsequent arguments he tried to derive from there.
Huh?
Where is "Cogito ergo sum" is the assumption of a higher power? All DesCartes is trying to do is prove his own existance to himself.
There is only one argument there, "Cogito" or "I think". From this, he draws one conclusion "Sum" or "I am".
There are no other assumptions made, the entire argument is self contained and three words long.
I don't see why a religious concept can't be explored in a philosophy class.
Coming from someone who claims to have taken a philosophy class but can't even understand the Cogito, one of the most basic arguments in philosophy, that statement shouldn't suprise me. You'd probably be surprised to learn that most major universities still have a Theology or Religious Studies department, and that this department is generally quite seperate from the Philosophy department. Let's leave the religious arguments (like ID) in the religion classes. Then we can leave the philosophy students to study philosophy and learn why ID is such a poorly devised argument.
It wasn't a window, it was a window cover. It's a device designed to protect the window from damage while it's sitting on the launch pad. It's supposed to come off (though not fall off) prior to launch. The fact that it fell off prematurely really isn't a big deal, the fact that the fall damaged some tiles on the shuttle's exterior is. However, they were able to remove the damaged section and replace it so this is really no longer an issue.
Of course gamers first bitch about how patches are never released in a timely fashion
Sorry, but that's not what I hear gamers saying, and it's definately not what the submitted said. What I hear gamers bitch about are games that are rushed out and *NEED* to be patched quickly because they are so damn buggy. In this case, they took a game that had been rushed out and needed a patch, then rushed out a patch. They took the game from "buggy but playable" to "nearly unplayable".
Frankly, people like you are a all too willing to shell out money for a buggy game "so I can play it early with support" are what screw the rest of us over. You seem to disparage Blizzard's practice of missing deadlines in order to release a better product when that's exactly what the rest of the industry should be doing.
I believe the story that you refer to is Issac Asimov's "The Feeling of Power". http://www.themathlab.com/writings/short%20stories /feeling.htm
And before someone even says it, public benefit != public use. The court was wrong.
but it would be legislating from the bench
No, as Justice O'Connor said in her dissent, it would have been upholding the 'Public Use' clause of the Constitution.
For what it's worth, I agree that if you want to see change to ED law now the way to do it is through state law. Not because that's what the constitution says, but becuase that's the only tool the SCOTUS left us.