Therefore, the development houses go for what they can be certain of- throw money at a game, sell it based on graphics, make money. It might not make the best games, but there's no denying that they *do* sell.
Yes, they sell. But the problem is they also RE-sell, because people get bored, decide they'll never want to play it again, realize it just takes up space, and figure that they would rather have $5 off another half price used title than trash it.
What the developers need is to make a game that people will want to KEEP. A game where people will install it first thing on getting their new computer. A game with sufficient portability that versions can be released on every new platform, and where it is believed by hardware makers afterwards no platform will succeed without that game being playable on it the day of release. A game where Slashdot will go up in arms when it is leaked Windows2020 doesn't run the old version from 2006, and the company can "reluctantly" agree to provide trade new disks for old, in exchange for "Shipping and Handling" costs working out to half the price of a new copy and a new steady business over the next twenty years.
The used market requires there be games, people willing to buy them used, and first-purchase buyers willing to sell them used. If no-one is willing to sell their beloved copy of Fallout 4, no-one gets to buy it used.
Of course, the problem with THIS idea is that it requires throwing not money, but both major creative talent and serious software development methods at the problem. I'm not holding my breath. On the other hand, Duke Nukem Forever is in production....
Also, most gamers are finding more value in trading games for new games, as their is generally no need to hold on to a game that has been played to death and will never be touched again.
So, if Game publishers want to cut out the used games phenomenon, all they have to do start making games that take a lot longer to play to death. Fallout, Fallout 2, Master Of Magic. I've had Master of Orion 3 since it first came out, and haven't even played a quarter of the races. (If the #$%^ing DirectX controlled engine didn't still have a major bug in it, I'd probably be wasting a lot more time on it. I still loose about four hours a month to it anyway.) I still own every game I felt was worth playing, and you have no idea how big a headache running MOM on a high-end XP machine is.
As you say: raise the quality, and the problem reduces. Which hurts profits more, higher development costs, or sales lost to the used market?
They should just make the motherboard have a physical switch on it that stops your bios from getting written to.
On the downside, that would probably be done as a jumper, and it can be quite difficult to find what the jumpers are on older hardware... which most often needs the BIOS update.
A backup BIOS might be another practical weapon. I think there are a few models on the market that use that as a feature. The main chip is the commonly-used flash BIOS so prevalent these days; but there is also a true ROM chip, with the original factory 1.0 BIOS on it. The BIOS flash utility lets you flash the BIOS from the backup, or you can boot with a particular jumper set to do it. (Yeah, still that jumper problem.) While not protecting against a BIOS flash, it does make it easier to restore if you accidently mistake an MP3 of William Shatner's "Mr. Tambourine Man".
As others have noted, GBLT-friendly != GBLT. I'd class myself as fairly GBLT freindly. I am not, however, GBLT; I'm "depressingly straight," according to one fellow who made a pass at me. (I like women.) This action by Blizzard would tempt me enough to buy the game so I could join such a guild as protest.... and then return it, again as protest, if Blizzard did not back down.
A more valid criticism from Blizzard might be that forming such a Guild implies that there exist guilds which are NOT GBLT-freindly. Which, ergo, means that Blizzard has not lived up to their terms of service. Which, unfortunately, is probably true... but if Bliz deny it, their lawyers might be able to color such as libel. (IAmNotALawyer.) And, as such, would be grounds for disciplinary action.
I'd say Blizzard's only hope of keeping their ass well out of the sling would be to code a 'bot to grep all chat for the harrassing "fag/gay" terms (and variant spellings), and subjecting those who use that language to rapidly escalating prohibitions. If you get a three hour ban for use of "LGBT", the term the community accepts for itself without offense, then the use of offensive terms ought to be grounds for permanent ban, with at least a 24 hour ban for at most one (if any) "first offense" warning.
Do I think they will? Mmm... nope. One reason I only play D2 on LAN, never Battlenet.
If the offended person really wants a scorched-earth revenge on Blizzard, they should spend a month quietly item trading on Ebay, and then cough up the $650 bucks and lawyer's fees for a Private Letter Ruling from the IRS that has about 50-50 odds to destroy the MMORPG industry. People in glass houses....
a) Al Jazeera.net is not the same as Al Jazeera broadcast
Aljazeera.net is the online version of the same Aljazeera.
The difference may still be significant. I've watched FoxNews on cable, and looked at FoxNews.com on the web. The Web version almost lives up to "fair and balanced". The cable version leans markedly further right.
However, if the original posted intended to mark that difference, they should have been more explicit.
The Military has battle plans for every single contingency
Yes, but do they LOOK at them?
I can't find a source on line, so this is my recollection of a newspaper article circa 2003. In it, a retired some-star general said he had been in charge of the contingency planning for Desert Storm, which basically consisted of the scenario: "What if a SNAFU results in our infantry accidentally overrunning Baghdad, and we conquer the country by mistake?" Bush I team came up with a detailed plan for an interim government, police forces, etc... and, since it was never needed, filed it somewhere in the bowels of the Pentagon, in a clearly marked file. The Clinton administration pulled it a couple times when contemplating Saddam, but shrugged and put it back. And then the general retired, shortly before the Dems got booted. (Dumbasses: yes, Bush Won.)
He got worried around the time of the 2nd Iraq war, because press from the pentagon suggested no-one seemed to have the slightest awareness of what they would do after they were in charge. "But there's a detailed plan. Clearly filed, there's a detailed plan." So he asked about it on running into an non-retired buddy. And was told by his blank-faced bud: "What plan?" They had never looked for it.
THWACK!
This claim may have been disproven, but I don't know. Anyone have a source on-line about this?
So you're okay with more repressiveness, so long as you have more fairness?
"Okay with" grossly overstates it. However, given the choice between the constant increasingly obsessive negative focus SOLEY on sex, and a more widespread repression... well, yes. While politically I'm closest to libertarian, I'm ultimately a pragmatist: if something increases the likelihood of a major breakdown in society, it's generally a bad thing. As a rough analogy, it's the difference between someone who has a highly repressed personality, and one with a major obsession about something: the former is just an asshole, the latter looks more like a psychiactric breakdown about to happen. I think the signs of increased parity indicates reduced likelihood of imminent abrupt social collapse.
I'm happier in a scenario that leaves me time to finish the degree I'm working on before I have to grab my passport and flee the country.
- it gradually becomes more and more of a hassle to run it (DOS games? floppies? etc.)
That's one reason why I bought Virtual PC for Windows.
- the graphics "degrade" - not really, but old games used to engage us with no problems, and the graphics were still amazing every new generation of games... go back a few generations and the graphics just plain look "bad", even though they haven't actually changed
Hey, I still play Angband, and the graphics still look OK to me....
- gameplay becomes simplistic - yes, it was great at the time, and some games were pioneers and are true classics.
...which is one of the reasons I tend to buy either used or clearance. If you wait a year or three, rather than having the latest and greatest, the hardware requirements are a lot cheaper to meet, the frame rates are better, and the bugs have (almost) all been patched out.
I suspect the game industry needs to learn more about the handling of "back titles" from the movie and publishing industries... hopefully, more from the latter.
...are that if you see someone doing something you don't understand when studying a culture, as a gross oversimplification it's either art, religion, or a lone nut. My mom, not being in the computer culture, doesn't understand it. Gaming isn't a "lone nut" phenomenon. So, is it art, or religion?
Very nice; an excellent improvement. The aesthetics aren't perfect, but those can be tweaked over time; the core new functionality is great.
Of course, Slashdot login was still broken in Safari 1.0 last I checked, but unlike most people, I'm not in love with any individual browser; I've got Safari, IdiotExploder, Netscape, and Opera all running. I'm content.
Unlike the magnets, this electrical system really does chemically change the wine.
s/does/might/
It's more promising than the magnets, but the bunkum FTA about "the taste of wine is enhanced by the mixture of alcohol with water molecule clusters" leaves me skeptical. I spent two years spent in the same house with an oenophile chemistry major turned professional wine maker. As I recall from his occasional diatribe on the topic, the nuances of wine flavor are primarily from esters and other complex organics; the sugar content and types determine the sweetness, but contribute little to the subtleties; and the water and ethanol are tasteless, merely controling how concentrated the other tastes are (and how quickly your judgement will go downhill).
This fellow may have stumbled on something... but stumbled is the right word. It sounds like he doesn't know enough of the science behind wine... which may be why most of the professionals (who do) are uninterested. I'll wait for the double-blind results.
Neither the Multitech, nor the Apple Airport Base station, can be gotten for much under $200. In contrast, various Yum Cha ethernet routers can be found on Newegg and the like for under $25; sometimes less, if there's a rebate. I picked up a wireless router for $15 including tax after rebates from a local brick-and-mortar, just because it was too cheap to not have one. (It's currently turned on and pissing off wardrivers by running as an open "access" point... unconnected to any other network. The other open access point in the neighborhood seems to run a penetration test on anything that connects. Freindly neighborhood, huh?)
The cheapest NAT firewall for dialup would probably be the cheapest used PII PC you can find with a modem and NIC, the cheapest router or switch you can buy, and a *nix LiveCD. That would still run $100ish, and power costs might make it a false economy.
If you need such, I'd go with the Airport Base -- not because I'm an Apple fan (my job makes me use 'em, and they're nice, but I spend my own money on cheaper PC gear), but because I expect most people will eventually move off of dialup, and the Airport works just as well on DSL.
It's like asking if you'd like to burn at 1000 degrees for an hour
It's not quite that bad; software patents aren't instantly fatal. Restricting software patents to a sufficiently short term of, say, three years from initial patent application, or to one year from actual issue, might not be overly burdensome if the patent office worked in a timely manner. However, given the tendency shown by copyright forces for term creep, and the potential for different kinds of ideas (software vs. gizmo) be patentable for differerent time frames being attacked as "confusing", it would seem the net benefit to society of short-term software patents is probably less than having software patents banned.
Give software another fifty years, and it may be ready to start having patents. Meanwhile, it's a bad thing.
No matter what protections are in place, the end result is a digital audio stream. I can always replace my speaker output line with a cable connected to a digital audio recording device and recreate a clean copy of that audio stream.
Unless, as I just realized, the digital audio stream is itself encrypted by the player hardware using the key from the DRM-licensed speakers, so that it will only play on that one pair of speakers.
The ultimate bane of existance for a DRM scheme is the analog hole, which (until bionics get a lot better) won't be possible to plug.
More or less. It's cryptographically impossible to close the last analog hole, since Bob and Eve are the same person (to Alice's irritation). However, making the digital part secure isn't that hard... if you accept a lot of incompatibility with non-DRM systems, and limits on what the consumer can do.
Lessee... postulate new proprietary media format -- the RIAA FuDisk -- and corresponding FuD player. Some aspect of the FuD technology must be clearly patentable to facilitate restricting manufacture-- perhaps some underlying encryption algorithm. FuD output is digital, but encrypted. Playback may only be by RIAA-approved FuD digitial decrypting speakers, which use a public/private key handshake with the player to ensure that the encrypted FuuP signal can only be played on the particular speaker. Circuitry of the decryption chips in FuD-approved speakers or player will self-destruct on physical tampering with any chip in the unit, such as from someone trying to replace the chip containing the speaker PKI key pair, or rewire the output from the analog speaker to an analog input.
Of course, there's still an analog hole of microphone-next-to-speakers, consumers won't be able to record on FuD, computers wouldn't be able to play the FuD music without a special sound card, FuD speakers would be unnaturally prone to failure from false positive tampering indicators, and no-one in their right mind would buy a FuD system. But those are relatively minor defects.
Someone put this idea in the "disclosed prior art" file, please....
It's a jail. Things only need to escape once. Once they escape they're on the internet in open formats and the game is over.
True; however, if the technology to arrange that escape is difficult enough so that very few people both can afford access and possess the skill to use it, Pirate hunting becomes practical.
What we need to do is institute corporate death penalties. If a corporation has committed a felony and cannot practically be imprisoned, then the only remaining option is to execute them.
I suppose you could get something equivalent to corporate imprisonment by requiring that for the term of imprisonment: all liquid assets must be converted to cash for non-interest escrow with the government, and non-liquid assets may only be transferred by Takings or sale for escrow; escrow may be tapped only for payment of extant debts or taxes; and possibly the corporation is prohibited from entering new contracts for the term.
Unfortunately, I think the blame lies at least in large part with the consumer.
I think the "exclusion of warranty" terms that are common to most EULA's may be more at the heart. The typical consumer who has a problem will eventually run into this, and be forced to spend an insane amount on legal fees to get the EULA invalidated as unconscionable, or (more likely) give up in disgust.
Perhaps there would be an impact from a federal law stating that software makers whose license terms are found unconscionable in court must notify all registered users of the software of that ruling....
MSN ought to comply with national laws, and be willing to assist in making sure a nation's citizens comply with them, even when Microsoft doesn't agree with those laws. (Would that Microsoft did that with business practice laws in the US and EU....) However, there are ways to do so, while still fighting censorship. Presumably, the Chinese were the ones objecting. They want the blog removed? Fine; but put the official objection complaint from the Chinese Government up instead. Or see if Chilling Effects is willing to expand their program, and try to have them host the official notice.
(PS, for some reason there is very little record of the whole Amatuer Action BBS fiasco in google's database, very odd for what was such a big deal at the time.)
Largely because the events are from the dawn of the WWW... although the EFF has some of the more important documents. It was a pretty depressing case from a 1st amendment standpoint. You'll find more if you do a Google Groups search (Usenet was full of it at the time; of course, folk say Usenet has always been full of it....), and if you spell "Amateur" correctly.
And, no, I don't really think it's that good of a comparison.
Both DVD Decrypter (final version 3.5.4.0) and DVD Shrink (final version 3.2.0.15) have had their "official" development and distribution channels driven off the net. They're not hard to find, but neither is in active public development.
I believe this sort of transfer of title, when ordered by the relevant national government corresponding to the Top Level Domain, should be most accurately called the exercise of Eminent Domain.
Slashdot Mirror
Yes, they sell. But the problem is they also RE-sell, because people get bored, decide they'll never want to play it again, realize it just takes up space, and figure that they would rather have $5 off another half price used title than trash it.
What the developers need is to make a game that people will want to KEEP. A game where people will install it first thing on getting their new computer. A game with sufficient portability that versions can be released on every new platform, and where it is believed by hardware makers afterwards no platform will succeed without that game being playable on it the day of release. A game where Slashdot will go up in arms when it is leaked Windows2020 doesn't run the old version from 2006, and the company can "reluctantly" agree to provide trade new disks for old, in exchange for "Shipping and Handling" costs working out to half the price of a new copy and a new steady business over the next twenty years.
The used market requires there be games, people willing to buy them used, and first-purchase buyers willing to sell them used. If no-one is willing to sell their beloved copy of Fallout 4, no-one gets to buy it used.
Of course, the problem with THIS idea is that it requires throwing not money, but both major creative talent and serious software development methods at the problem. I'm not holding my breath. On the other hand, Duke Nukem Forever is in production....
So, if Game publishers want to cut out the used games phenomenon, all they have to do start making games that take a lot longer to play to death. Fallout, Fallout 2, Master Of Magic. I've had Master of Orion 3 since it first came out, and haven't even played a quarter of the races. (If the #$%^ing DirectX controlled engine didn't still have a major bug in it, I'd probably be wasting a lot more time on it. I still loose about four hours a month to it anyway.) I still own every game I felt was worth playing, and you have no idea how big a headache running MOM on a high-end XP machine is.
As you say: raise the quality, and the problem reduces. Which hurts profits more, higher development costs, or sales lost to the used market?
On the downside, that would probably be done as a jumper, and it can be quite difficult to find what the jumpers are on older hardware... which most often needs the BIOS update.
A backup BIOS might be another practical weapon. I think there are a few models on the market that use that as a feature. The main chip is the commonly-used flash BIOS so prevalent these days; but there is also a true ROM chip, with the original factory 1.0 BIOS on it. The BIOS flash utility lets you flash the BIOS from the backup, or you can boot with a particular jumper set to do it. (Yeah, still that jumper problem.) While not protecting against a BIOS flash, it does make it easier to restore if you accidently mistake an MP3 of William Shatner's "Mr. Tambourine Man".
As others have noted, GBLT-friendly != GBLT. I'd class myself as fairly GBLT freindly. I am not, however, GBLT; I'm "depressingly straight," according to one fellow who made a pass at me. (I like women.) This action by Blizzard would tempt me enough to buy the game so I could join such a guild as protest.... and then return it, again as protest, if Blizzard did not back down.
A more valid criticism from Blizzard might be that forming such a Guild implies that there exist guilds which are NOT GBLT-freindly. Which, ergo, means that Blizzard has not lived up to their terms of service. Which, unfortunately, is probably true... but if Bliz deny it, their lawyers might be able to color such as libel. (IAmNotALawyer.) And, as such, would be grounds for disciplinary action.
I'd say Blizzard's only hope of keeping their ass well out of the sling would be to code a 'bot to grep all chat for the harrassing "fag/gay" terms (and variant spellings), and subjecting those who use that language to rapidly escalating prohibitions. If you get a three hour ban for use of "LGBT", the term the community accepts for itself without offense, then the use of offensive terms ought to be grounds for permanent ban, with at least a 24 hour ban for at most one (if any) "first offense" warning.
Do I think they will? Mmm... nope. One reason I only play D2 on LAN, never Battlenet.
If the offended person really wants a scorched-earth revenge on Blizzard, they should spend a month quietly item trading on Ebay, and then cough up the $650 bucks and lawyer's fees for a Private Letter Ruling from the IRS that has about 50-50 odds to destroy the MMORPG industry. People in glass houses....
The difference may still be significant. I've watched FoxNews on cable, and looked at FoxNews.com on the web. The Web version almost lives up to "fair and balanced". The cable version leans markedly further right.
However, if the original posted intended to mark that difference, they should have been more explicit.
Yes, but do they LOOK at them?
I can't find a source on line, so this is my recollection of a newspaper article circa 2003. In it, a retired some-star general said he had been in charge of the contingency planning for Desert Storm, which basically consisted of the scenario: "What if a SNAFU results in our infantry accidentally overrunning Baghdad, and we conquer the country by mistake?" Bush I team came up with a detailed plan for an interim government, police forces, etc... and, since it was never needed, filed it somewhere in the bowels of the Pentagon, in a clearly marked file. The Clinton administration pulled it a couple times when contemplating Saddam, but shrugged and put it back. And then the general retired, shortly before the Dems got booted. (Dumbasses: yes, Bush Won.)
He got worried around the time of the 2nd Iraq war, because press from the pentagon suggested no-one seemed to have the slightest awareness of what they would do after they were in charge. "But there's a detailed plan. Clearly filed, there's a detailed plan." So he asked about it on running into an non-retired buddy. And was told by his blank-faced bud: "What plan?" They had never looked for it.
THWACK!
This claim may have been disproven, but I don't know. Anyone have a source on-line about this?
"Okay with" grossly overstates it. However, given the choice between the constant increasingly obsessive negative focus SOLEY on sex, and a more widespread repression... well, yes. While politically I'm closest to libertarian, I'm ultimately a pragmatist: if something increases the likelihood of a major breakdown in society, it's generally a bad thing. As a rough analogy, it's the difference between someone who has a highly repressed personality, and one with a major obsession about something: the former is just an asshole, the latter looks more like a psychiactric breakdown about to happen. I think the signs of increased parity indicates reduced likelihood of imminent abrupt social collapse.
I'm happier in a scenario that leaves me time to finish the degree I'm working on before I have to grab my passport and flee the country.
On the other hand, I'd rather parity be restored by increasing open-mindedness about sex... but I'll take what I can get.
That's one reason why I bought Virtual PC for Windows.
- the graphics "degrade" - not really, but old games used to engage us with no problems, and the graphics were still amazing every new generation of games... go back a few generations and the graphics just plain look "bad", even though they haven't actually changed
Hey, I still play Angband, and the graphics still look OK to me....
- gameplay becomes simplistic - yes, it was great at the time, and some games were pioneers and are true classics.
I suspect the game industry needs to learn more about the handling of "back titles" from the movie and publishing industries... hopefully, more from the latter.
I can see a case being made either way....
Of course, Slashdot login was still broken in Safari 1.0 last I checked, but unlike most people, I'm not in love with any individual browser; I've got Safari, IdiotExploder, Netscape, and Opera all running. I'm content.
s/does/might/
It's more promising than the magnets, but the bunkum FTA about "the taste of wine is enhanced by the mixture of alcohol with water molecule clusters" leaves me skeptical. I spent two years spent in the same house with an oenophile chemistry major turned professional wine maker. As I recall from his occasional diatribe on the topic, the nuances of wine flavor are primarily from esters and other complex organics; the sugar content and types determine the sweetness, but contribute little to the subtleties; and the water and ethanol are tasteless, merely controling how concentrated the other tastes are (and how quickly your judgement will go downhill).
This fellow may have stumbled on something... but stumbled is the right word. It sounds like he doesn't know enough of the science behind wine... which may be why most of the professionals (who do) are uninterested. I'll wait for the double-blind results.
s/Linksys/El Cheapo/g
Neither the Multitech, nor the Apple Airport Base station, can be gotten for much under $200. In contrast, various Yum Cha ethernet routers can be found on Newegg and the like for under $25; sometimes less, if there's a rebate. I picked up a wireless router for $15 including tax after rebates from a local brick-and-mortar, just because it was too cheap to not have one. (It's currently turned on and pissing off wardrivers by running as an open "access" point... unconnected to any other network. The other open access point in the neighborhood seems to run a penetration test on anything that connects. Freindly neighborhood, huh?)
The cheapest NAT firewall for dialup would probably be the cheapest used PII PC you can find with a modem and NIC, the cheapest router or switch you can buy, and a *nix LiveCD. That would still run $100ish, and power costs might make it a false economy.
If you need such, I'd go with the Airport Base -- not because I'm an Apple fan (my job makes me use 'em, and they're nice, but I spend my own money on cheaper PC gear), but because I expect most people will eventually move off of dialup, and the Airport works just as well on DSL.
It's not quite that bad; software patents aren't instantly fatal. Restricting software patents to a sufficiently short term of, say, three years from initial patent application, or to one year from actual issue, might not be overly burdensome if the patent office worked in a timely manner. However, given the tendency shown by copyright forces for term creep, and the potential for different kinds of ideas (software vs. gizmo) be patentable for differerent time frames being attacked as "confusing", it would seem the net benefit to society of short-term software patents is probably less than having software patents banned.
Give software another fifty years, and it may be ready to start having patents. Meanwhile, it's a bad thing.
Unless, as I just realized, the digital audio stream is itself encrypted by the player hardware using the key from the DRM-licensed speakers, so that it will only play on that one pair of speakers.
The ultimate bane of existance for a DRM scheme is the analog hole, which (until bionics get a lot better) won't be possible to plug.
More or less. It's cryptographically impossible to close the last analog hole, since Bob and Eve are the same person (to Alice's irritation). However, making the digital part secure isn't that hard... if you accept a lot of incompatibility with non-DRM systems, and limits on what the consumer can do.
Lessee... postulate new proprietary media format -- the RIAA FuDisk -- and corresponding FuD player. Some aspect of the FuD technology must be clearly patentable to facilitate restricting manufacture-- perhaps some underlying encryption algorithm. FuD output is digital, but encrypted. Playback may only be by RIAA-approved FuD digitial decrypting speakers, which use a public/private key handshake with the player to ensure that the encrypted FuuP signal can only be played on the particular speaker. Circuitry of the decryption chips in FuD-approved speakers or player will self-destruct on physical tampering with any chip in the unit, such as from someone trying to replace the chip containing the speaker PKI key pair, or rewire the output from the analog speaker to an analog input.
Of course, there's still an analog hole of microphone-next-to-speakers, consumers won't be able to record on FuD, computers wouldn't be able to play the FuD music without a special sound card, FuD speakers would be unnaturally prone to failure from false positive tampering indicators, and no-one in their right mind would buy a FuD system. But those are relatively minor defects.
Someone put this idea in the "disclosed prior art" file, please....
It's a jail. Things only need to escape once. Once they escape they're on the internet in open formats and the game is over.
True; however, if the technology to arrange that escape is difficult enough so that very few people both can afford access and possess the skill to use it, Pirate hunting becomes practical.
To survive cruel-and-unusual scrutiny, you'd need to limit the corporate death penalty to crimes that normally get the death penalty.
I suppose you could get something equivalent to corporate imprisonment by requiring that for the term of imprisonment: all liquid assets must be converted to cash for non-interest escrow with the government, and non-liquid assets may only be transferred by Takings or sale for escrow; escrow may be tapped only for payment of extant debts or taxes; and possibly the corporation is prohibited from entering new contracts for the term.
NeverGonnaHappen.
I think the "exclusion of warranty" terms that are common to most EULA's may be more at the heart. The typical consumer who has a problem will eventually run into this, and be forced to spend an insane amount on legal fees to get the EULA invalidated as unconscionable, or (more likely) give up in disgust.
Perhaps there would be an impact from a federal law stating that software makers whose license terms are found unconscionable in court must notify all registered users of the software of that ruling....
Removed entirely, according to BoingBoing.
MSN ought to comply with national laws, and be willing to assist in making sure a nation's citizens comply with them, even when Microsoft doesn't agree with those laws. (Would that Microsoft did that with business practice laws in the US and EU....) However, there are ways to do so, while still fighting censorship. Presumably, the Chinese were the ones objecting. They want the blog removed? Fine; but put the official objection complaint from the Chinese Government up instead. Or see if Chilling Effects is willing to expand their program, and try to have them host the official notice.
Largely because the events are from the dawn of the WWW... although the EFF has some of the more important documents. It was a pretty depressing case from a 1st amendment standpoint. You'll find more if you do a Google Groups search (Usenet was full of it at the time; of course, folk say Usenet has always been full of it....), and if you spell "Amateur" correctly.
And, no, I don't really think it's that good of a comparison.
Goatse.
I would recommend the Lian Li PC70 case... or buying external drives. =)
Where in the hell is all that lava coming from?