Whatever the consumer may think, a publisher is in the business of making money. If there is no money, there is no product to be produced and delivered to the consumer.
In the case of NCSoft, why would they freeware a product that would directly compete with their existing titles? I think, in the case of MMOs, the consumer should be aware that they do not own the game in question. They really do not own their characters. They are essentially renting space for entertainment purposes. When you go to the theater, you are renting a seat for the time required. They are not selling you the seat nor the movie.
Now, I do agree that old single player titles, abandonware, should be opened up to at least allow the user to run the game. Similar to a book. When I've bought a book, read through it several times, placed on my shelf for 20 years, I am not prevented from reading it again later. Many times, this is exactly what has and/or will happen with single player games that require draconic DRM measures (perhaps that codewheel was lost in the wheel of time, perhaps the DRM authentication servers have died a fiery death never to be resurrected). This doesn't necessarily mean the company gives up their rights to the software, code, and IP - they would still be free to create sequels, or whatever.
Sure, and the United States and most other "Western" countries are just as evil as, say, North Korea, Qaddafi, and (name any current dictator) willing to sacrifice the lives of their citizens at any whim.
Exactly. What I want to know is how do these "sock puppet" accounts get mod points to spend. It took me awhile to get mod points. My karma's good enough now that when I get a couple of positive mods on my comment, I'll get 15 points for 3 days. But a sock puppet account tells me that these are dormant accounts until they get to spend these apparently unexpired mod points. It sounds to me that someone is shilling here.
He does have a point, but he's making the point while shilling himself. I read a very backhanded slam against Microsoft and pro Macintosh vibe in the GPs comment. While I'm no shill for either party, I know I will never own an Apple product (something about a certain Jobs keeping total control over the entire hardware and software system bothers me), and I will avoid Microsoft as much as possible - right tool for the right job and all (Linux for where it's needed and/or desired, Windows for games - and, yes, I was successful at using Wine, but there is still the graphics card driver limitation in Linux for both ATI and nVidia.)
As it happens, you really don't know who is sitting next to you at work or who is flying that plane. I recently read my hometown's EMS service employees were part of a swingers club. I'm not the type of person that condones that behavior, and with the diseases that abound from promiscuity, I'd rather not have my health worker doing those sorts of things. YMMV.
My point is, your bank manager may be taking his earrings, nose piercings, and goth outfit off during the day so that he can stay gainfully employed, but keep his hobbies to himself and after hours.
While I agree, there are certain corporations which do, in fact, try to utilize the government for protection of their outdated mode profit generation by means of sending gov't workers with guns to raid your wallet, audit your bank account, and/or throw you in prison. (ie. see RIAA).
But, on the whole, I agree with you. The government *is* more powerful and potentially more dangerous than a corporation. As a lateral piece of evidence, see the bailouts of the financial and auto industries. Those companies would have failed if not for the "more powerful" government to step in and use the public's moneys gained through the force of threat (perceived or otherwise).
Not likely in Pakistan. The region, currently, is far too unstable for any Westerners to step foot there without advanced knowledge of language and weapons use or, perhaps, belonging to a certain religion. Perhaps, if they recreated it somewhere (Arizona, Texas, Kansas?), that re-creation would be the tourist spot.
In my town, which is supposed to be the 16th largest city in the US, it takes me ~35 minutes to travel from home to work. If I take the normal line bus route, that same trip is ~75 minutes. If I take the express line, the trip is ~55 minutes and I am limited to working about a 7.5 hour day (and no lunch) - which isn't good for the employee who can't make up the time while on the road sitting on the bus.
Legalese. They defended their IP against Geohot's hacking. Whether we see it like that is a different story. Most of us see it as Geohot had to defend his ownership of hardware from Sony. IANAL, but I think the law sees both as correct until a judgment is made.
Really, then what about Anonymous taking credit for the HBGary deal? Perhaps not especially carefully planned, but it was planned. Certainly not very professional - but what is professional about cracking systems - even when the (Chinese, US, Russian, insert your own) government does it on enemy servers? It was highly sophisticated - if you consider social engineering and/or knowledge of vulnerabilities sophisticated - I happen to think it is.
Before Sony announced this, I always felt it was an Anonymous attack because there were those that claimed to be Anonymous had threatened to do so. I'm sure some of those "members" were also disheartened with the way things turned out between Sony and geohot. It is not that unreasonable to think they went ahead and attempted something.
The only way to prove or disprove the claim is to follow the data trail if the data gets out. If the data does not get out, at all, then I would be fairly certain that it was an Anonymous attack - because they did it for the LuLz.
Notice, I'm not taking Sony's side. They're completely stupid for a lot of things. But to say that statement cannot be associated with members of Anonymous is denying the possibilities of Anonymous and their past works.
Seriously, the approach taken by the tellers in the situation described is one where I would start shopping around to new banks, if only for security reasons.
I'd bet that when you have that $6000 in cash to pay off, plus, maybe $150 extra for servicing the loan, the loan company would take that and clear your name of the loan. Loan companies realize that getting something from the loan, even if it is breaking even or losing a little, is better than getting nothing at all. All it really takes is writing a few letters and/or talking with a loan company agent.
Granted, this is assuming that you can earn and save for that $6150.
Perhaps. But as a citizen of the USA, I notice that Americans are very giving people of both time and money to charities and those in need. Churches and other charities abound that assist those in need and the poor in pulling themselves out of the dredges of being poor, if at all possible. Certainly, there are circumstances where a person is completely unable to financially take care of themselves through no fault of their own.
Unfortunately, the government will give money away for "free" and the charities usually require effort from the person so that that person can gain upward mobility. The freeloaders are usually not the ones that will want to put in any effort.
I agree with you. Though, I think I agree with those that advocate a 3 month bumper in savings. That is, if you lose your job, will you be able to pay the minimum on all your bills for 3 months from savings? If not, back off paying down the debts of those loans until the savings is "full".
I have been rather disappointed with the lack of rogue-likes on handheld devices such as the Palm. Blackberry, Android, et al. The early reasoning was that there was not enough memory and processing power on a handheld to handle nethack. But that can't be true anymore today. I mean nethack is an old game, having been played on 486s. Handhelds today have a lot more power than that and more memory than my first 486's hard drive (especially when the handheld is paired with a flash memory card).
I've tried Dweller, and it's a nice, short, easily winnable, small feature set, but random levels game. I've tried some of the others and they aren't even up to Dweller's feature set. How hard would it really be to port nethack to these devices? (Hard enough I suppose, as it hasn't been done yet.)
Either way it is a pricing error. It's just that in one direction, they will have more unit sales. The question is, do they lose more money by selling 0 units at the incorrectly priced $8.5b or when they sell 1000s of units at an undervalued price?
I didn't have cable TV for years before I got married. That was 6 years ago. I'm almost to the point of convincing her to dump it. There are only a couple of channels we don't get online that she enjoys watching.
The problem I see in your proposition is that the small guys who really do have a case will have to take out loans or gather donations/credits to foot that bond. Granted, if you have a case, doing so may be justified, but it is an added burden.
I sure wish it was time to move on. Many organizations are still supporting Windows 2000 in active production uses. I shudder for those still having to support WinNT servers.
Slashdot Mirror
Whatever the consumer may think, a publisher is in the business of making money. If there is no money, there is no product to be produced and delivered to the consumer.
In the case of NCSoft, why would they freeware a product that would directly compete with their existing titles? I think, in the case of MMOs, the consumer should be aware that they do not own the game in question. They really do not own their characters. They are essentially renting space for entertainment purposes. When you go to the theater, you are renting a seat for the time required. They are not selling you the seat nor the movie.
Now, I do agree that old single player titles, abandonware, should be opened up to at least allow the user to run the game. Similar to a book. When I've bought a book, read through it several times, placed on my shelf for 20 years, I am not prevented from reading it again later. Many times, this is exactly what has and/or will happen with single player games that require draconic DRM measures (perhaps that codewheel was lost in the wheel of time, perhaps the DRM authentication servers have died a fiery death never to be resurrected). This doesn't necessarily mean the company gives up their rights to the software, code, and IP - they would still be free to create sequels, or whatever.
Sure, and the United States and most other "Western" countries are just as evil as, say, North Korea, Qaddafi, and (name any current dictator) willing to sacrifice the lives of their citizens at any whim.
Dell - Be beige
Perhaps this is referring to something else? Their cases have been black since the late 1990's.
There is the Albert Einstein quote: "It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education."
Exactly. What I want to know is how do these "sock puppet" accounts get mod points to spend. It took me awhile to get mod points. My karma's good enough now that when I get a couple of positive mods on my comment, I'll get 15 points for 3 days. But a sock puppet account tells me that these are dormant accounts until they get to spend these apparently unexpired mod points. It sounds to me that someone is shilling here.
He does have a point, but he's making the point while shilling himself. I read a very backhanded slam against Microsoft and pro Macintosh vibe in the GPs comment. While I'm no shill for either party, I know I will never own an Apple product (something about a certain Jobs keeping total control over the entire hardware and software system bothers me), and I will avoid Microsoft as much as possible - right tool for the right job and all (Linux for where it's needed and/or desired, Windows for games - and, yes, I was successful at using Wine, but there is still the graphics card driver limitation in Linux for both ATI and nVidia.)
As it happens, you really don't know who is sitting next to you at work or who is flying that plane. I recently read my hometown's EMS service employees were part of a swingers club. I'm not the type of person that condones that behavior, and with the diseases that abound from promiscuity, I'd rather not have my health worker doing those sorts of things. YMMV.
My point is, your bank manager may be taking his earrings, nose piercings, and goth outfit off during the day so that he can stay gainfully employed, but keep his hobbies to himself and after hours.
That's why I always eat sausages 24 at a time. Who's laughing now, smart guy??
It's a good thing they don't sell 10 sausages and 12 finger rolls to a pack then!
While I agree, there are certain corporations which do, in fact, try to utilize the government for protection of their outdated mode profit generation by means of sending gov't workers with guns to raid your wallet, audit your bank account, and/or throw you in prison. (ie. see RIAA).
But, on the whole, I agree with you. The government *is* more powerful and potentially more dangerous than a corporation. As a lateral piece of evidence, see the bailouts of the financial and auto industries. Those companies would have failed if not for the "more powerful" government to step in and use the public's moneys gained through the force of threat (perceived or otherwise).
Not likely in Pakistan. The region, currently, is far too unstable for any Westerners to step foot there without advanced knowledge of language and weapons use or, perhaps, belonging to a certain religion. Perhaps, if they recreated it somewhere (Arizona, Texas, Kansas?), that re-creation would be the tourist spot.
In my town, which is supposed to be the 16th largest city in the US, it takes me ~35 minutes to travel from home to work. If I take the normal line bus route, that same trip is ~75 minutes. If I take the express line, the trip is ~55 minutes and I am limited to working about a 7.5 hour day (and no lunch) - which isn't good for the employee who can't make up the time while on the road sitting on the bus.
not batting an eye at a 5 figure account? I'm usually pleased when I break 4 figures!
Legalese. They defended their IP against Geohot's hacking. Whether we see it like that is a different story. Most of us see it as Geohot had to defend his ownership of hardware from Sony. IANAL, but I think the law sees both as correct until a judgment is made.
Really, then what about Anonymous taking credit for the HBGary deal? Perhaps not especially carefully planned, but it was planned. Certainly not very professional - but what is professional about cracking systems - even when the (Chinese, US, Russian, insert your own) government does it on enemy servers? It was highly sophisticated - if you consider social engineering and/or knowledge of vulnerabilities sophisticated - I happen to think it is.
Before Sony announced this, I always felt it was an Anonymous attack because there were those that claimed to be Anonymous had threatened to do so. I'm sure some of those "members" were also disheartened with the way things turned out between Sony and geohot. It is not that unreasonable to think they went ahead and attempted something.
The only way to prove or disprove the claim is to follow the data trail if the data gets out. If the data does not get out, at all, then I would be fairly certain that it was an Anonymous attack - because they did it for the LuLz.
Notice, I'm not taking Sony's side. They're completely stupid for a lot of things. But to say that statement cannot be associated with members of Anonymous is denying the possibilities of Anonymous and their past works.
That would be a nice "problem" to have! Hehe.
Seriously, the approach taken by the tellers in the situation described is one where I would start shopping around to new banks, if only for security reasons.
I'd bet that when you have that $6000 in cash to pay off, plus, maybe $150 extra for servicing the loan, the loan company would take that and clear your name of the loan. Loan companies realize that getting something from the loan, even if it is breaking even or losing a little, is better than getting nothing at all. All it really takes is writing a few letters and/or talking with a loan company agent.
Granted, this is assuming that you can earn and save for that $6150.
Granted, it would be difficult for this to go unnoticed, but what happens when you get rooted, and the pwner recompiles the kernel module for it?
Perhaps. But as a citizen of the USA, I notice that Americans are very giving people of both time and money to charities and those in need. Churches and other charities abound that assist those in need and the poor in pulling themselves out of the dredges of being poor, if at all possible. Certainly, there are circumstances where a person is completely unable to financially take care of themselves through no fault of their own. Unfortunately, the government will give money away for "free" and the charities usually require effort from the person so that that person can gain upward mobility. The freeloaders are usually not the ones that will want to put in any effort.
I agree with you. Though, I think I agree with those that advocate a 3 month bumper in savings. That is, if you lose your job, will you be able to pay the minimum on all your bills for 3 months from savings? If not, back off paying down the debts of those loans until the savings is "full".
I have been rather disappointed with the lack of rogue-likes on handheld devices such as the Palm. Blackberry, Android, et al. The early reasoning was that there was not enough memory and processing power on a handheld to handle nethack. But that can't be true anymore today. I mean nethack is an old game, having been played on 486s. Handhelds today have a lot more power than that and more memory than my first 486's hard drive (especially when the handheld is paired with a flash memory card).
I've tried Dweller, and it's a nice, short, easily winnable, small feature set, but random levels game. I've tried some of the others and they aren't even up to Dweller's feature set. How hard would it really be to port nethack to these devices? (Hard enough I suppose, as it hasn't been done yet.)
I'd rather not say, as the general consensus on this board would ridicule and attack her (and me) for our choice in programming.
Either way it is a pricing error. It's just that in one direction, they will have more unit sales. The question is, do they lose more money by selling 0 units at the incorrectly priced $8.5b or when they sell 1000s of units at an undervalued price?
I didn't have cable TV for years before I got married. That was 6 years ago. I'm almost to the point of convincing her to dump it. There are only a couple of channels we don't get online that she enjoys watching.
Even with password protected WiFi, the lock can still be broken.
The problem I see in your proposition is that the small guys who really do have a case will have to take out loans or gather donations/credits to foot that bond. Granted, if you have a case, doing so may be justified, but it is an added burden.
I sure wish it was time to move on. Many organizations are still supporting Windows 2000 in active production uses. I shudder for those still having to support WinNT servers.