Most homes where this will be bought have always on Internet anyway. How many people here specifically turn on their router when they want to go online? Besides which, this is a game designed to be played online with others. TFS only linked to a little diatribe that didn't actually link back to the source. Actual entry for this story on PSN is here.
Besides, the game is not unique in this. Dragon Age II will make periodic calls home to check it's legit. Is that game going to do badly, too? Linking a game to a legitimate account online is one of the least inconvenient to the user methods of reducing piracy.
These throwaway hotmail accounts are too little too late for me.
I get so much spam on my hotmail account that it's kind of my throwaway account already. Nowadays I only bother to check it once every few months:).
In contrast my yahoo and gmail accounts don't get even the same magnitude of spam passing the spam filters.
Is this a fair comparison? You say you've had the hotmail account longer than the Yahoo and Gmail accounts, which means it is more likely to have made its way onto spam lists. Also, do you use them for different purposes? For example, I have one that I use primarily for forums and Slashdot and it gets hit far, far more than others that I have had for a similar length of time.
So I guess for the statistician, it's more like occassionaly finding a bit of money lying there. He walks in, glances at the few tickets he can see for a few moments (I bet he'd get quicker at it over time) and buys one if he knows he's going to get X money from it.
That said, lottery tickets tend to be bought by the less affluent / educated, so it would be kind of mean. You'd essentially be subsidising your income with the efforts of the less well-off.
Now if he were a mangement type, he would have collected a bunch of his students, say five or six, and sent them forth to earn the money and take a cut off their earnings.
You're kidding, right? In the UK it's not the government that tells doctors how to practice, it's other doctors. It's also doctors and scientists who figure out what drugs are legal and illegal, and it's local authorities who determine how to spend their money. You seem to think it's guys in suits making all this stuff up, when clearly it's delegated to experts in the various affected sectors.
Get a fucking grip.
I was part of the management of a surgery in the UK for three years, I think I know a little bit about how the goverment prescribes what GPs can and cannot do. If you think the Department of Health doesn't tell hospitals and general practices in the UK how to operate, then I don't know what you think they do instead.
What you are seeking to do is distinguish between two categories of restriction. For examples, a law preventing one party assaulting another, and a law preventing one party selling unlicensed herbal remedies to another party. This is off the cuff and unexamined, but I would say that the distinguishing criteria is that in the former category, the restriction is with the consent of the affected parties, and in the latter the restriction is without the consent of either party. So in a scenario where one party does something to another that the recipient doesn't wish (robbery, assault, contract violation, whatever), we do not say that the government is saying "they know best" because at least one of the parties agrees with the government - that is to say, the government is no longer a "they". But in a scenario where the recipient wants to receive the action (selling of desired product or service, exchange of information, etc.), we do say that the government is saying "they know best" because both parties agree that the government is very much a "they".
Sounds more like an argument against corporate corruption than GM itself.
Complicated answer: It can be considered partially such an argument, as some of those reasons given are diminished in an ideal world without such behaviour by corporations. However, these GM crops are developed precisely because these corporations can use them in this manner. The problems that GM crops are claimed to solve, also vanish in a world without these market pressures. Also, note that I referred to market pressures rather than "corporate corruption" as you did. What Monsanto does in trying to get people hooked (for want of a better word) on their patented crops is not 'corruption'. It is merely a socially destructive business practice. Trying to shift the resistance from 'GM crops' to, 'misused GM crops', doesn't improve things, because we're unlikely to see non-misused GM crops. A market where they wouldn't be used in a socially destructive manner is a market where they wouldn't be nearly as much desired by those that make them. It would have to be a very non-free market indeed. Also, not that only a few of the reasons given against GM crops were to do with business practices. Others stand regardless - e.g. environmental damage.
People keep eating cows. They're not a permanent feature that must be dealt with somehow. You just have to replace them more slowly until you have reached equalibrium.
If you look at anti-GM arguments more closely, you'll find that many (most?) people are opposed to them because there are environmental risks, because one of the most common uses of GM is to allow vastly stronger herbicides / pesticides, because it enables patenting of the food supply, because terminator crops reduce farmer's negotiating power with the companies that make them, because it is unlikely that the modifications can be prevented from entering the general biosphere meaning companies are taking it upon themselves to alter plantlife for everyone without consent and because there are few if any compelling arguments in their favour. At best, they tend to be a patch on a symptom, rather than an actual solution. For example the superbly marketed "golden rice" which contains additonal vitamin A, touted as a great benefit to people in India where deficiency is not uncommon. The thing is, it didn't used to be uncommon when farmers grew a variety of crops. But now due to the pressures of the international market, famers tend to focus on a few money crops (i.e. rice) and thus people don't get the balanced diet that they used to. Slapping some vitamin A into the rice (in exchange for selling your new pesticides and crop licences) is not redress for the damage done to world farming.
You'll notice that none of this has anything to do with whether or not people eat at McDonalds (which I don't).
GP said "make me that extra little bit more reluctant to waste my extremely limited time on slashdot", which is evidently a lie, since he uses his "extremely limited time" to post on Slashdot.
It is possible to be reluctant to do something and yet to do it willingly, thus it is not evidently a lie.
I wouldn't. Laws based on protecting individual rights, e.g. assault, theft, etcetera are not about "knowing best" in this sense. But some other laws are. And indeed a lot of the things that convey these attitudes aren't laws at all, but merely conditions the government requires you to meet in order to get a licence / approval / funding.
What do you mean "In the US, it even decides who may or may not vote!". Does the UK let everyone vote (incl. children, non-citizens)?
In the US, your right to vote can be taken away from you by means of prosecuting you for a crime. And in fact a lot of people, typically from poor backgrounds, are disenfranchised in this manner.
Your terrible grammar nullifies any argument you may have had.
I wrote 'no' instead of 'know' the first time I used it. That's not an error of grammar, it's just typing too quickly. It really has no bearing on any argument's legitimacy and I doubt you'd "nullify" an argument that you agreed with on those grounds.
GP provided a plausible rationale for the way TFA article was written and provided feedback on what he likes / dislikes about Slashdot. You post said: "fuck off". I have to say that I think his adds more information to the discussion than yours.
Please feel free to predictably tell me to fuck off now and prove my point.
If you assume that the people in control of the US media got where they are by being stupid, you're very wrong. And if you think there aren't endless close ties between the mainstream media and the government, you're even more wrong.
In states like China, where the government asserts that it knows best
The US and UK governments assert that they no best through a never ending flood of requirements on educational practices, telling Doctors how to practice, how to manage land, what drugs and herbal remedies are legal and illegal, how local authorities may spend their money. There's no end to it really. In the US, it even decides who may or may not vote! All of which are direct assertions that they know best.
Freetard == Pirates. Libre software is not in the same category. As someone who comfortably uses MS software (albeit also uses Gentoo), if you really want to promote MS Products, please lend your support to the "other side" because you ain't helping MS's PR by spouting a load of crap on their behalf. I don't know what the Hell you find worth mocking in "SSH". It's something pretty fundamental and used by everyone.
Wow!. You've gone back to a thread over six months old to respond to a post I've made. And committed thread bleed to do so. I think it's generally bad form to start following arguments from article to article because it makes a mess for those who want to follow a discussion and it is almost always used in a negative way for bearing grudges and not letting things drop (as here). The old story is locked to replies seeing as it really is quite old, but you could have sent me a message as I doubt people in a discussion of UK ISPs really want to see a thread-bleeding discussion of the iPad bouncing around from story to story. If you're going to link to old discussions, at least have the decency to link to the beginning of the discussion so that people can get a proper take on it. Having just gone back and read the posts, I can't see anything in what you just wrote that isn't actually either covered or wasn't something I was talking about. Well except for a lot of new statements about how I am "complaining" and "tone trolling".
I had to look up "tone trolling" and it's apparently someone who demands civility in discourse. You are mistaken - I wasn't highlighting how you used the word whinging in your argument, I was highlighting that it was the sum total of your argument. Honestly, if someone clearly and calmly explains what they require from a hardware device, you can argue what is good or bad about those requirements. But saying they are "whinging" is not a refutation.
If someone wants to mod this whole mess off-topic, I'll accept the karma hit as fair, but please get Mr. "I obsesses about discussions six months ago" down too.
In short, I'm not going to re-open this discussion and particularly not when most of what you say is nothing that wasn't answered, but just angry and sarcastic repetition. And quite honestly, that you're still wound up about something that long ago (where I was incidentally a great deal politer throughout than you were), is downright disturbing.
Slashdot is something of an echo chamber. There's an entire world out there that isn't filled with people trying to proclaim piracy a moral action, but the group think in this place is extraordinary. You see similar things in articles about Microsoft.
My argument is that copyright protection is a transaction between society and creators. Our payment is a temporary monopoly on distribution, their payment is giving their works to the public domain. One side isn't fulfilling their obligation and my argument really doesn't need to go any further than that.
Yes. I've replied to that argument each time with the same points: it's arbitrary (and convenient) for you to say you represent "society" and that you're therefore going to benefit from other people's work for free whilst some of us pay for you. But I fail to see what in real terms you have contributed to these works that makes you taking them for free equitable. Your argument stops at the point where you have to explain what exists on your side of the "contract". We fulfil our side by paying money for the product which rewards the creators for adding value. You appear not to.
I have plenty of shows on my media server that I did download, but you'll be hard pressed to make me feel guilty since I pay my cable bill every month and I don't see a substantive difference between setting my media server to record these shows as they air and downloading them. Either way, I have made my payment
You seem to have this mental category in which you lump all producers of films, books, computer games, music and now, apparently, ISPs. In the above, you seem to feel that so long as you have paid some money to someone, you've fulfilled your side of the "contract" because you've just lumped all these disparate artists, authors, game designers whatever, into some gestalt entity. Paying your ISP is not paying the content producers for their work, neither in terms of who profits nor in the amount, just as your talking about Buddy Holly still being in copyright has no bearing on modern movies or computer games.
Incidentally, you state how you paying your cable bill every month entitles you. Is it correct to say that if, as with pirating media, you could reap the benefits of having that connection without actually paying for it, you would not voluntarily send your ISP that amount each month. Is it not true that their ability to cut you off has a bearing on your paying. If so, it carries no moral weight.
Ninjas are Japanese, dude. Not Chinese. You're going to have to settle for being a Shaolin Monk. Less cool toys, but you do get to be enlightened and stuff.
Yes. He's an excellent writer and Ender's Game in particular was a favourite book of mine as a child. That said, is there any particular reason for an arbitrary Ender reference jammed into TFS? Is the editor just trying to pad it out or something?
We are talking about AMERICA, yeah, the GREAT AMERICA, beaten down by the canajians???
Please say it ain't true, AMERICA !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I once had a meeting with a software partner from a Canadian telecomms company when I worked in that industry who said: "Most of our country is below freezing for half the year. We're good at technologies that mean we don't have to go outside."
Slashdot Mirror
Well, that will be a game that sells well.
Most homes where this will be bought have always on Internet anyway. How many people here specifically turn on their router when they want to go online? Besides which, this is a game designed to be played online with others. TFS only linked to a little diatribe that didn't actually link back to the source. Actual entry for this story on PSN is here.
Besides, the game is not unique in this. Dragon Age II will make periodic calls home to check it's legit. Is that game going to do badly, too? Linking a game to a legitimate account online is one of the least inconvenient to the user methods of reducing piracy.
These throwaway hotmail accounts are too little too late for me. I get so much spam on my hotmail account that it's kind of my throwaway account already. Nowadays I only bother to check it once every few months :).
In contrast my yahoo and gmail accounts don't get even the same magnitude of spam passing the spam filters.
Is this a fair comparison? You say you've had the hotmail account longer than the Yahoo and Gmail accounts, which means it is more likely to have made its way onto spam lists. Also, do you use them for different purposes? For example, I have one that I use primarily for forums and Slashdot and it gets hit far, far more than others that I have had for a similar length of time.
So I guess for the statistician, it's more like occassionaly finding a bit of money lying there. He walks in, glances at the few tickets he can see for a few moments (I bet he'd get quicker at it over time) and buys one if he knows he's going to get X money from it.
That said, lottery tickets tend to be bought by the less affluent / educated, so it would be kind of mean. You'd essentially be subsidising your income with the efforts of the less well-off.
Now if he were a mangement type, he would have collected a bunch of his students, say five or six, and sent them forth to earn the money and take a cut off their earnings.
You're kidding, right? In the UK it's not the government that tells doctors how to practice, it's other doctors. It's also doctors and scientists who figure out what drugs are legal and illegal, and it's local authorities who determine how to spend their money. You seem to think it's guys in suits making all this stuff up, when clearly it's delegated to experts in the various affected sectors.
Get a fucking grip.
I was part of the management of a surgery in the UK for three years, I think I know a little bit about how the goverment prescribes what GPs can and cannot do. If you think the Department of Health doesn't tell hospitals and general practices in the UK how to operate, then I don't know what you think they do instead.
Did you vote 3rd party? Then you are some sort of weirdo or mutant!
Mutation is what provides change for evolution. ;)
What you are seeking to do is distinguish between two categories of restriction. For examples, a law preventing one party assaulting another, and a law preventing one party selling unlicensed herbal remedies to another party. This is off the cuff and unexamined, but I would say that the distinguishing criteria is that in the former category, the restriction is with the consent of the affected parties, and in the latter the restriction is without the consent of either party. So in a scenario where one party does something to another that the recipient doesn't wish (robbery, assault, contract violation, whatever), we do not say that the government is saying "they know best" because at least one of the parties agrees with the government - that is to say, the government is no longer a "they". But in a scenario where the recipient wants to receive the action (selling of desired product or service, exchange of information, etc.), we do say that the government is saying "they know best" because both parties agree that the government is very much a "they".
I hope that is of use.
Regards,
H.
Sounds more like an argument against corporate corruption than GM itself.
Complicated answer: It can be considered partially such an argument, as some of those reasons given are diminished in an ideal world without such behaviour by corporations. However, these GM crops are developed precisely because these corporations can use them in this manner. The problems that GM crops are claimed to solve, also vanish in a world without these market pressures. Also, note that I referred to market pressures rather than "corporate corruption" as you did. What Monsanto does in trying to get people hooked (for want of a better word) on their patented crops is not 'corruption'. It is merely a socially destructive business practice. Trying to shift the resistance from 'GM crops' to, 'misused GM crops', doesn't improve things, because we're unlikely to see non-misused GM crops. A market where they wouldn't be used in a socially destructive manner is a market where they wouldn't be nearly as much desired by those that make them. It would have to be a very non-free market indeed. Also, not that only a few of the reasons given against GM crops were to do with business practices. Others stand regardless - e.g. environmental damage.
People keep eating cows. They're not a permanent feature that must be dealt with somehow. You just have to replace them more slowly until you have reached equalibrium.
If you look at anti-GM arguments more closely, you'll find that many (most?) people are opposed to them because there are environmental risks, because one of the most common uses of GM is to allow vastly stronger herbicides / pesticides, because it enables patenting of the food supply, because terminator crops reduce farmer's negotiating power with the companies that make them, because it is unlikely that the modifications can be prevented from entering the general biosphere meaning companies are taking it upon themselves to alter plantlife for everyone without consent and because there are few if any compelling arguments in their favour. At best, they tend to be a patch on a symptom, rather than an actual solution. For example the superbly marketed "golden rice" which contains additonal vitamin A, touted as a great benefit to people in India where deficiency is not uncommon. The thing is, it didn't used to be uncommon when farmers grew a variety of crops. But now due to the pressures of the international market, famers tend to focus on a few money crops (i.e. rice) and thus people don't get the balanced diet that they used to. Slapping some vitamin A into the rice (in exchange for selling your new pesticides and crop licences) is not redress for the damage done to world farming.
You'll notice that none of this has anything to do with whether or not people eat at McDonalds (which I don't).
GP said "make me that extra little bit more reluctant to waste my extremely limited time on slashdot", which is evidently a lie, since he uses his "extremely limited time" to post on Slashdot.
It is possible to be reluctant to do something and yet to do it willingly, thus it is not evidently a lie.
I wouldn't. Laws based on protecting individual rights, e.g. assault, theft, etcetera are not about "knowing best" in this sense. But some other laws are. And indeed a lot of the things that convey these attitudes aren't laws at all, but merely conditions the government requires you to meet in order to get a licence / approval / funding.
What do you mean "In the US, it even decides who may or may not vote!". Does the UK let everyone vote (incl. children, non-citizens)?
In the US, your right to vote can be taken away from you by means of prosecuting you for a crime. And in fact a lot of people, typically from poor backgrounds, are disenfranchised in this manner.
Your terrible grammar nullifies any argument you may have had.
I wrote 'no' instead of 'know' the first time I used it. That's not an error of grammar, it's just typing too quickly. It really has no bearing on any argument's legitimacy and I doubt you'd "nullify" an argument that you agreed with on those grounds.
GP provided a plausible rationale for the way TFA article was written and provided feedback on what he likes / dislikes about Slashdot. You post said: "fuck off". I have to say that I think his adds more information to the discussion than yours.
Please feel free to predictably tell me to fuck off now and prove my point.
The American media are stupid all by themselves.
If you assume that the people in control of the US media got where they are by being stupid, you're very wrong. And if you think there aren't endless close ties between the mainstream media and the government, you're even more wrong.
In states like China, where the government asserts that it knows best
The US and UK governments assert that they no best through a never ending flood of requirements on educational practices, telling Doctors how to practice, how to manage land, what drugs and herbal remedies are legal and illegal, how local authorities may spend their money. There's no end to it really. In the US, it even decides who may or may not vote! All of which are direct assertions that they know best.
Freetard == Pirates. Libre software is not in the same category. As someone who comfortably uses MS software (albeit also uses Gentoo), if you really want to promote MS Products, please lend your support to the "other side" because you ain't helping MS's PR by spouting a load of crap on their behalf. I don't know what the Hell you find worth mocking in "SSH". It's something pretty fundamental and used by everyone.
Sounds like most Western nations, too, if you ask me.
Wow!. You've gone back to a thread over six months old to respond to a post I've made. And committed thread bleed to do so. I think it's generally bad form to start following arguments from article to article because it makes a mess for those who want to follow a discussion and it is almost always used in a negative way for bearing grudges and not letting things drop (as here). The old story is locked to replies seeing as it really is quite old, but you could have sent me a message as I doubt people in a discussion of UK ISPs really want to see a thread-bleeding discussion of the iPad bouncing around from story to story. If you're going to link to old discussions, at least have the decency to link to the beginning of the discussion so that people can get a proper take on it. Having just gone back and read the posts, I can't see anything in what you just wrote that isn't actually either covered or wasn't something I was talking about. Well except for a lot of new statements about how I am "complaining" and "tone trolling".
I had to look up "tone trolling" and it's apparently someone who demands civility in discourse. You are mistaken - I wasn't highlighting how you used the word whinging in your argument, I was highlighting that it was the sum total of your argument. Honestly, if someone clearly and calmly explains what they require from a hardware device, you can argue what is good or bad about those requirements. But saying they are "whinging" is not a refutation.
If someone wants to mod this whole mess off-topic, I'll accept the karma hit as fair, but please get Mr. "I obsesses about discussions six months ago" down too.
In short, I'm not going to re-open this discussion and particularly not when most of what you say is nothing that wasn't answered, but just angry and sarcastic repetition. And quite honestly, that you're still wound up about something that long ago (where I was incidentally a great deal politer throughout than you were), is downright disturbing.
Slashdot is something of an echo chamber. There's an entire world out there that isn't filled with people trying to proclaim piracy a moral action, but the group think in this place is extraordinary. You see similar things in articles about Microsoft.
My argument is that copyright protection is a transaction between society and creators. Our payment is a temporary monopoly on distribution, their payment is giving their works to the public domain. One side isn't fulfilling their obligation and my argument really doesn't need to go any further than that.
Yes. I've replied to that argument each time with the same points: it's arbitrary (and convenient) for you to say you represent "society" and that you're therefore going to benefit from other people's work for free whilst some of us pay for you. But I fail to see what in real terms you have contributed to these works that makes you taking them for free equitable. Your argument stops at the point where you have to explain what exists on your side of the "contract". We fulfil our side by paying money for the product which rewards the creators for adding value. You appear not to.
I have plenty of shows on my media server that I did download, but you'll be hard pressed to make me feel guilty since I pay my cable bill every month and I don't see a substantive difference between setting my media server to record these shows as they air and downloading them. Either way, I have made my payment
You seem to have this mental category in which you lump all producers of films, books, computer games, music and now, apparently, ISPs. In the above, you seem to feel that so long as you have paid some money to someone, you've fulfilled your side of the "contract" because you've just lumped all these disparate artists, authors, game designers whatever, into some gestalt entity. Paying your ISP is not paying the content producers for their work, neither in terms of who profits nor in the amount, just as your talking about Buddy Holly still being in copyright has no bearing on modern movies or computer games.
Incidentally, you state how you paying your cable bill every month entitles you. Is it correct to say that if, as with pirating media, you could reap the benefits of having that connection without actually paying for it, you would not voluntarily send your ISP that amount each month. Is it not true that their ability to cut you off has a bearing on your paying. If so, it carries no moral weight.
Ninjas are Japanese, dude. Not Chinese. You're going to have to settle for being a Shaolin Monk. Less cool toys, but you do get to be enlightened and stuff.
Yes. He's an excellent writer and Ender's Game in particular was a favourite book of mine as a child. That said, is there any particular reason for an arbitrary Ender reference jammed into TFS? Is the editor just trying to pad it out or something?
We are talking about AMERICA, yeah, the GREAT AMERICA, beaten down by the canajians???
Please say it ain't true, AMERICA !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I once had a meeting with a software partner from a Canadian telecomms company when I worked in that industry who said: "Most of our country is below freezing for half the year. We're good at technologies that mean we don't have to go outside."