They sink a lot of time and effort into developing games for the Phantom platform. They get purchase by SOE, and then have to try to sell games with both SOE and EA on the box. The best and brightest decide to take their chances, jump ship and start their own company. John Madden cancels the licensing agreement, and we have to have Marv Albert NFL.
But it's probably good for Take Two. Basically, if you really thought the game was horribly offensive and you're willing to swear to it, you get a brand new copy of the game that has the offensive material removed. If you're really outraged that it slipped out into public, and you want to stick it to the company, you can provide detailed receipts from over two years ago and they'll send you $35. I'm betting the take rate won't be very high on the settlement.
Sounds like a good time to make sure you've donated what you can to the EFF. The big fear, obviously, is that the RIAA will get to define what constitutes infringement, and suddenly you can't rip CD's to your MP3 player anymore.
It's more clear in the link directly from the article. The cost from the primary article is referenced as attorney and court costs. The jurist(s) in the case would be the judges, so it's likely it's a mix of court costs and attorney fees that both companies are splitting.
I think you might be missing something. At least according to one source they're supposed to have a non-toxic glue. Unless information comes forward saying they were actually designed for this drug, it leaves the door open to the possibility that a contaminant got into the toys or a factory swapped to the chemicals as a cost saving measure. Unless people from the supplier start getting arrested, the story seems to lend itself to something happening factory side.
I will agree, however, that there's a pretty quick rush to throw "Chinese" into everything on this one, especially lacking some info that'd clear the whole thing up.
But for someone at CIO level to get canned it was either something that borders, or is just straight up illegal that MS is trying to keep under wraps primarily because it would damage their reputation, whether it was something tacitly approved by them or completely unknown to them. Or, possibly, they had it out for him and used some minor infringement as the basis for letting him go. Something like "Sorry, the company limit on gifts from vendors and suppliers is $50, and that widget was clearly $51 after tax!"
Either way I'm sure he has some majestic golden parachute that will help ensure that neither he nor his family could potentially go hungry for the next 5 generations if they're marginally competent at managing money, provided he never talks about it...of course.
The government, thankfully. They always know what's best for us. You'd have to be insane to say something negative about the government, because loosely defined enough hate speech laws might allow the government to jail opposition voices because they "could be seeking to disrupt public order or incite riots." We can't have riots, that would be double-plus ungood.
Yet they keep coming, because some marketroid decided that there's still milk in that franchise cash cow despite the fact that to the nearest decimal point, nobody cares.
Obviously somebody cares. The franchise games are selling, and are probably doing pretty well. For every serious gamer out there, there is probably a gamer that only really care about Madden and is waiting for the next version to have the latest draft picks (or whatever it is that makes one Madden game different from the other). Some games that are really good either don't get the sales they need, or leave developers in a lurch. If you can't think of a way to truly make the sequel as good as the first, why tarnish the memory of the first with a sequel at all? You run the risk of turning into another franchise with stupid sequels just for the sake of sequels.
Unacknowledged dev's use their inside knowledge to give their former employer a black eye. It's almost as good as the one where the developer actually releases it themselves to try to drum up publicity for a game that would probably fade quickly away otherwise.
But Mandriva didn't win anything. They don't negotiate the contract for their OS to be on the systems, do they? They're on the system by default, right? Essentially, Mandriva sent out a big press release saying that thousands of computers running Mandriva had been ordered...in a similar fashion to all the MS releases touting the number of Windows installs as being high, without taking into account that the numbers are artificially inflated because of a lack of other options from a number of manufacturers.
Whether MS is looking at this as a big PR stunt, or a chance to rope more people into using their OS, remains to be seen. I'm sure they offered a sweet deal to the Nigerian government, but it might not have been bribery. After all, when corporations offer to do nice things for impoverished governments at no cost, that's charity...right?
The flip side is that if they didn't require Mac hardware for their OS, they'd have a ready-made base of how many millions of people who are just about fed up with Windows but not technically-minded enough to scrap it and go to some Linux varient? With Vista being the OS equivalent of a steaming pile of poo, a lot of users might be willing to jump ship for OS/X. They could get a decent OS to do their web browsing and email, and they'd be set. Pimp it out to a few major PC vendors, and get even more users going. Add-in some ready made service contracts to add to the cost of the OS, and you're golden. Charge $200 for the OS, and an optional 1 year contract for $100. Get better response times for more money, and get people who are thinking about their next computer to actually consider a Mac (they'd already be used to the OS, the change in hardware vendor wouldn't mean much to your average user).
I bet lawyers are salivating. With 9 million subscribers, all of whom are directly or indirectly affected by Comcast's actions, you've got a pretty sizable number of people who might sign on. Granted, all the people in the class action suit will get next to nothing. But the lawyers won't have to worry about paying for their children to eat for a while.
But I don't like the trend of *everything* moving to a web based structure. Given the dire effects I've seen as a result of unfinished network applications and stacks getting plugged into a corporate network by accident, I darn sure don't want to have to keep a box (regardless of how well firewalled stuff is) plugged in to do development.
Don't give Microsoft so much credit. It's possible that they got lucky, essentially, in having Vista not be affected because of any number of changes made in the core of the OS. I don't trust Microsoft, and I also don't think they're crafty enough to come up with this as part of a master plan. Coming up with it through stupidity and lack of planning and communication across groups internally, I'd believe.
I dunno... I'd think you'd have to be in a position to personally benefit (one way or the other) from exposing the flaw. For example, telling a company that if they don't pay you money, you'll expose this flaw would definitely land you in legal hot water. Threatening to expose it via telling the company about it, waiting a reasonable time, then publishing it if the company doesn't respond probably wouldn't run afoul of the new law. I would guess that using the flaw yourself to benefit (like through stealing data) is already punishable under current laws.
The data that goes out, why spend incredible efforts tracking every action of the victims in case it's a fraud.. versus, invalidating the data that went out?
Because, right or wrong, that social security number is your magic number. It sounds simple to just invalidate it and get a new one. And if it were more like a credit card, it would be that simple. You run the risk of having to update one or two automatic payments out of your account, and that's about it. To get your social swapped, a bunch of government agencies would have to co-operate. Which is a pretty big issue on its own. Credit reporting agencies would have to be notified, banks, employers...darn near everybody you've ever done business with.
On the one hand, it's nice to say "they hosed it up, they should have to eat the cost to fix it," but the total cost would be enormous. Perhaps not in this case, but consider the case where the DoD wasn't sure exactly which vet's info might've gotten out into the wild. You're talking about the government, the same people who one way or the other screwed up the first time, having to track and change info for every person that is in, or ever has been in the military. And it has to be done properly. My info may or may not have been part of the info that was compromised, and I'd rather have them reimburse me for any losses that I might suffer than jump head long into my life and mix everything up if there's no need.
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They sink a lot of time and effort into developing games for the Phantom platform.
They get purchase by SOE, and then have to try to sell games with both SOE and EA on the box.
The best and brightest decide to take their chances, jump ship and start their own company.
John Madden cancels the licensing agreement, and we have to have Marv Albert NFL.
But it's probably good for Take Two. Basically, if you really thought the game was horribly offensive and you're willing to swear to it, you get a brand new copy of the game that has the offensive material removed. If you're really outraged that it slipped out into public, and you want to stick it to the company, you can provide detailed receipts from over two years ago and they'll send you $35. I'm betting the take rate won't be very high on the settlement.
It happens, but I think it's pretty rare (IANAL either). And usually for something pretty major, like to try to remove someone from office.
Sounds like a good time to make sure you've donated what you can to the EFF. The big fear, obviously, is that the RIAA will get to define what constitutes infringement, and suddenly you can't rip CD's to your MP3 player anymore.
It's more clear in the link directly from the article. The cost from the primary article is referenced as attorney and court costs. The jurist(s) in the case would be the judges, so it's likely it's a mix of court costs and attorney fees that both companies are splitting.
I didn't know we were measuring capacity based on the weight of the bits these days. Are more poignant songs heavier?
With robots already established as killing machines, why is there any doubt they'd try to take over?
I think you might be missing something. At least according to one source they're supposed to have a non-toxic glue. Unless information comes forward saying they were actually designed for this drug, it leaves the door open to the possibility that a contaminant got into the toys or a factory swapped to the chemicals as a cost saving measure. Unless people from the supplier start getting arrested, the story seems to lend itself to something happening factory side.
I will agree, however, that there's a pretty quick rush to throw "Chinese" into everything on this one, especially lacking some info that'd clear the whole thing up.
But for someone at CIO level to get canned it was either something that borders, or is just straight up illegal that MS is trying to keep under wraps primarily because it would damage their reputation, whether it was something tacitly approved by them or completely unknown to them. Or, possibly, they had it out for him and used some minor infringement as the basis for letting him go. Something like "Sorry, the company limit on gifts from vendors and suppliers is $50, and that widget was clearly $51 after tax!"
Either way I'm sure he has some majestic golden parachute that will help ensure that neither he nor his family could potentially go hungry for the next 5 generations if they're marginally competent at managing money, provided he never talks about it...of course.
Who gets to define what "hate speech" is?
The government, thankfully. They always know what's best for us. You'd have to be insane to say something negative about the government, because loosely defined enough hate speech laws might allow the government to jail opposition voices because they "could be seeking to disrupt public order or incite riots." We can't have riots, that would be double-plus ungood.
Yet they keep coming, because some marketroid decided that there's still milk in that franchise cash cow despite the fact that to the nearest decimal point, nobody cares.
Obviously somebody cares. The franchise games are selling, and are probably doing pretty well. For every serious gamer out there, there is probably a gamer that only really care about Madden and is waiting for the next version to have the latest draft picks (or whatever it is that makes one Madden game different from the other). Some games that are really good either don't get the sales they need, or leave developers in a lurch. If you can't think of a way to truly make the sequel as good as the first, why tarnish the memory of the first with a sequel at all? You run the risk of turning into another franchise with stupid sequels just for the sake of sequels.
Unacknowledged dev's use their inside knowledge to give their former employer a black eye. It's almost as good as the one where the developer actually releases it themselves to try to drum up publicity for a game that would probably fade quickly away otherwise.
But Mandriva didn't win anything. They don't negotiate the contract for their OS to be on the systems, do they? They're on the system by default, right? Essentially, Mandriva sent out a big press release saying that thousands of computers running Mandriva had been ordered...in a similar fashion to all the MS releases touting the number of Windows installs as being high, without taking into account that the numbers are artificially inflated because of a lack of other options from a number of manufacturers.
Whether MS is looking at this as a big PR stunt, or a chance to rope more people into using their OS, remains to be seen. I'm sure they offered a sweet deal to the Nigerian government, but it might not have been bribery. After all, when corporations offer to do nice things for impoverished governments at no cost, that's charity...right?
The flip side is that if they didn't require Mac hardware for their OS, they'd have a ready-made base of how many millions of people who are just about fed up with Windows but not technically-minded enough to scrap it and go to some Linux varient? With Vista being the OS equivalent of a steaming pile of poo, a lot of users might be willing to jump ship for OS/X. They could get a decent OS to do their web browsing and email, and they'd be set. Pimp it out to a few major PC vendors, and get even more users going. Add-in some ready made service contracts to add to the cost of the OS, and you're golden. Charge $200 for the OS, and an optional 1 year contract for $100. Get better response times for more money, and get people who are thinking about their next computer to actually consider a Mac (they'd already be used to the OS, the change in hardware vendor wouldn't mean much to your average user).
I bet lawyers are salivating. With 9 million subscribers, all of whom are directly or indirectly affected by Comcast's actions, you've got a pretty sizable number of people who might sign on. Granted, all the people in the class action suit will get next to nothing. But the lawyers won't have to worry about paying for their children to eat for a while.
But I don't like the trend of *everything* moving to a web based structure. Given the dire effects I've seen as a result of unfinished network applications and stacks getting plugged into a corporate network by accident, I darn sure don't want to have to keep a box (regardless of how well firewalled stuff is) plugged in to do development.
As long as I'm not listening to Jean-Claude Van Damme pronounce it, I don't care.
Don't give Microsoft so much credit. It's possible that they got lucky, essentially, in having Vista not be affected because of any number of changes made in the core of the OS. I don't trust Microsoft, and I also don't think they're crafty enough to come up with this as part of a master plan. Coming up with it through stupidity and lack of planning and communication across groups internally, I'd believe.
So instead of doing the right thing even though they might not get it through, they just fold? That's some good politicking there.
I would say that preventing Gigi from being shown is a case of censorship done right.
I dunno... I'd think you'd have to be in a position to personally benefit (one way or the other) from exposing the flaw. For example, telling a company that if they don't pay you money, you'll expose this flaw would definitely land you in legal hot water. Threatening to expose it via telling the company about it, waiting a reasonable time, then publishing it if the company doesn't respond probably wouldn't run afoul of the new law. I would guess that using the flaw yourself to benefit (like through stealing data) is already punishable under current laws.
The data that goes out, why spend incredible efforts tracking every action of the victims in case it's a fraud.. versus, invalidating the data that went out?
Because, right or wrong, that social security number is your magic number. It sounds simple to just invalidate it and get a new one. And if it were more like a credit card, it would be that simple. You run the risk of having to update one or two automatic payments out of your account, and that's about it. To get your social swapped, a bunch of government agencies would have to co-operate. Which is a pretty big issue on its own. Credit reporting agencies would have to be notified, banks, employers...darn near everybody you've ever done business with.
On the one hand, it's nice to say "they hosed it up, they should have to eat the cost to fix it," but the total cost would be enormous. Perhaps not in this case, but consider the case where the DoD wasn't sure exactly which vet's info might've gotten out into the wild. You're talking about the government, the same people who one way or the other screwed up the first time, having to track and change info for every person that is in, or ever has been in the military. And it has to be done properly. My info may or may not have been part of the info that was compromised, and I'd rather have them reimburse me for any losses that I might suffer than jump head long into my life and mix everything up if there's no need.
Can someone give me one thing I can click which will explain this whole thing?
I could, but I'd have to get your promise that you'd click twice to get to it...at least until this whole thing blows over.
"I did not have sexual relations with that government!"
You mean you didn't know about Mel's Hole?