f everything is done by pen and paper, 1) it'll take forever to get the election results, and 2) the losing candidate can still question the vote.
1) Pen and paper doesn't take forever to count. In Canada, we can get federal election results approximately 3 hours after polls close, and they're all pencil and paper. Just because the US has a larger population doesn't mean it'll take longer, just hire more people to count and that's it.
2) If the losing candidate questions the vote, he and his opponent can both witness the recount. One can hardly question again after having witnessed the recount.
There's no spyware involved here. When you launch the game, you expect it to go online and connect to a server. It's only through this connection that the (in)validation is made.
The software doesn't look for anything else on the computer, it doesn't monitor anything, etc. All it does is call home, which is perfectly legal for a game where you knew right from the start that you would need it to call home to activate.
Learn the difference between stealing and illegal copyright infringement. They are NOT one and the same.
I know the difference between stealing and illegal copyright infringement, and I didn't say they were the same. I brought this example (the movement of money in a bank) to try and stop people from saying that there must be physical goods involved in order for it to be theft. Theft isn't only about physical goods.
Now, downloading stuff on the 'net isn't theft either, but when I say what it is, I get modded down as flamebait, go figure...
In this case it is not the company who is violating copyright, they are merely providing a tool that can be used by the end-users to infringe copyright.
You are completely wrong. As per the game EULA, NC Interactive owns the characters, even though it's the users that made them. Therefore, the company owns the infringing work, and they are the ones who should be sued. They're not being sued for providing a tool, they're being sued for claiming ownership and using characters they don't actually own.
*sigh* How many of those stupid comments will we see now?
You couldn't sue HP because their stuff can let someone infringe your copyright/trademark. You can only sue the owner of the infringing material, so if you duplicate your artwork, you can sue yourself for owning and using a copy of your work.
Marvel isn't suing because there is a tool that allows people to make infringing characters, they are suing because NC Interactive owns the characters (as per the game EULA) and are using them to do business. There is not even a chance of it being fair use.
What're they gonna do next-- sue a pencil and paper, because some guy traced the Hulk?
They won't sue just because some guy traced the Hulk. However, they will sue if some guy traced the Hulk and then used his drawn Hulk to do business (ads, posters, business cards, anything even remotely related to his business). In this case, they wouldn't sue the pen-company, they would sue the owner of the infringing drawing.
In this case, from the EULA, NC Interactive owns the character. They are using the character for doing business (it is being actively used on their MMORPG server with which they make money). Therefore, Marvel is not suing because it is possible to draw the Hulk with the game-tool, they are suing because the company owns and uses the character in their business, which is a totally valid reason to sue.
Members can upload to and create content on our servers in various forms [...] you acknowledge and agree that such Member Content is the sole property of NC Interactive.
So by uploading a Wolverine-like character, NC Interactive claims ownership of the Wolverine-like character, so NC Interactive is in trouble for owning and using a trademarked character in their game.
However...
You shall indemnify and hold NC Interactive harmless from and against any claims by third parties that your Member Content infringes upon, violates or misappropriates any of their intellectual property or proprietary rights.
So basically it's the user who's in trouble. I wonder how many of those users will get sued by NC Interactive in order to indemnify them.
If I can infiltrate your bank's computer system, substract 1000 from the number saying how much you got in your account, and add 1000 from the number saying how much I got in my account, I didn't take any physical good from you, but did I just steal from you?
Stop believing what the RIAA/MPAA wants you to believe.
Simply because file-sharing doesn't involve physical goods, which means it's not theft, doesn't mean it's not piracy, and it's not any more legal than theft.
Taking a physical CD from a music store is theft. Downloading a CD you don't own is piracy.
And as of E3 there were more GameCubes sold than Xboxes. I'm tired of people treating them like they are dead.
Yep, and year after year, Nintendo sells more and more consoles, yet the Sony/Microsoft fanboys keep saying it's dead.
Last year, Nintendo sold more consoles than either Sony or Microsoft during the holiday period, which is one of the most important period financially for game companies (and we're not even talking about the GBA here...). I'm a Nintendo fanboy and I'm proud of it, but I also respect Sony and Microsoft for what they do. Sony's and Microsoft's fanboys seem to have a hard time respecting Nintendo though. That's sad.
I sent an email to EBGames asking about what kind of deal they might have going on a trade-in of a GBA SP for a Nintendo DS. If I could get a DS for ~$80, I'd take it. Nothing back from them as of yet.
Since they're probably already out-of-stock and you didn't preorder it yet, chances are you won't be hearing from them.
Last I checked, Mozilla Calendar didn't work with the RC1... did they make it work with 1.0 now? (I'd check, but every firefox download site looks slashdotted at the moment...)
Because it's free, and he and his wife just want to watch the story -- they don't want to collect them, or enjoy them in top quality format.
Once again, this is exactly what the **AA claims, but even though your friend downloads them all "just because it's free", if he couldn't get them for free, would he go see them all in the theater? Is every movie he downloads a lost sale?
DVD-rips are of a good quality, I agree. The distinction I was making was more about what the article mentionned... somebody going into a movie theater with a camcorder and filming the movie. That's a huge loss in quality. Box office sales are affected by the camcorder piracy, not dvd-ripping.
On the question about the MPAA not losing as much money as the RIAA, he replies : Someone sneaks into a theater with a camcorder, films a movie, puts it online for the world to see for free
True, but the major difference between RIAA piracy and MPAA piracy is quality...
RIAA : Someone buys a CD, rips it to mp3 (or whatever format), shares it, somebody downloads it and can listen to it with virtually no loss in quality.
MPAA : Somebody goes to a movie theater, he brings a camcorder, films the screen, shares the result. Someone downloads the movie, shitty resolution (even 800x600 doesn't compare to today's hyper-huge-screen theaters), crappy sound.
People who know they'll enjoy the movie will still go to the theater or buy the DVD because shared copies lose a lot of quality compared to the theater version (much smaller resolution and crappy sound), and also some quality when ripped from the DVD version (file decryption/compression usually affects the quality of the colors).
People who know they'll enjoy the music can still download it and have a 'good-enough' copy and most people won't know the difference.
When people figure out a way to pirate theater movies with high-quality, then it will become a major issue in MPAA's income. For now, they're just trying to make money off people who downloads their movies and who wouldn't have gone to the theater anyway.
I asked lots of questions. one of them, literally was "I wonder what would happen if i dropped a cd into a microwave for a few seconds?"
When you ask such questions, you shouldn't have the right to backup a copy... It's just as stupid as insuring your vehicle and setting it on fire... You destroyed it on purpose, tough luck, go buy another.
As grandparent post said, you cannot accidentally microwave something.
I can't see filing a lawsuit for mass defects on a product 3 years from initial purchase as being even remotely close to valid unless recently purchased units are suffering the same fate.
RTFA... The plaintiff, Sean Burke, said his console stopped reading any and all discs after less than a year of use, whether those discs were games, CDs or DVDs. (emphasis mine)
Even though the console was available 3 years ago, the guy bought it recently...
I dunno about California, but up here in Québec, we have laws that force companies to offer a warranty that lasts for "a reasonable time" after initial purchase, based on the price paid for the object. Such things as "90 days parts and service" never hold up in court. Given the price tag of the Xbox, failing after less than a year makes it still under warranty, no need to file class action suit.
I was puzzled by his numbers on vulnerabilities. He said that "Windows had fixed 120 vulnerabilities in a 12 month period" which implies an arrival rate of 10 a month but later on he gives a much lower arrival rate.
I just thought it was funny that he provided a link to Secunia for Red Hat but not for Windows Server 2003. He probably didn't want to show that, even though Red Hat seems to have more vulnerabilities, 0% of them are unpatched and 23% had a criticality rating of "Highly critical" and above, while Windows Server 2003 had less vulnerabilities, but 13% are still unpatched and 52% of them have a criticality rating of "Highly critical" and above.
but if that mass of brain cells were capable of 'learning' to control or react to input, was it conciousness?
If it was consciousness, then what's kinda freaky about this whole thing is :
As living computers, they may someday be used to fly small unmanned airplanes or handle tasks that are dangerous for humans, such as search-and-rescue missions or bomb damage assessments.
If the pack of brain cells are conscious, they might come to a point where they simply will not want to go on dangerous missions...
at some time in your programming career you probably will come across a genuine compiler bug, and no-one will believe you
Oh so true... I once hit such a bug (be it compiler, OS or whatever, I didn't investigate that deeply), I was compiling an OpenGL/Qt application with g++ on an IRIX platform, and something just wasn't right... One of the most basic ways of debugging being sending output at just about every line of code, here's what I saw on the console:
SomeClass::SomeClass()// default constructor { cerr << "Beginning constructor\n";\ myAttribute = 5 ;// myAttribute is an int cerr << "myAttribute = " << myAttribute << endl; // [...] rest of the constructor }
... and then, I got an output of "myAttribute = 0"...
I lost about 2 days just trying to find that stupid "bug", but damn did it feel good that I could actually prove I was not wrong on that one.
I never knew exactly what caused it, but fixing it required to scrap 2 files (declaration and implementation of the class) and write it again.
Compiler bugs *do* exist, you just need to find a way to prove it to your boss.
Now would be the time to grow up people. Stop seeing Big Brother everywhere you look. Parents want to protect their child against some material, but since there are technologies they don't understand, they don't always know how to apply control.
I doubt that just any video store clerk will let an 8-year-old rent an R-rated sexually explicit movie... should we call Big Brother on that? It's just common sense.
Violence is not something normal, and it takes a certain level of maturity to understand that. That is why movies and games are rated. An young kid probably doesn't have the maturity (read "real-life experience") to understand that games are just games.
Just like in germany where german is as good as deutsch.
And the difference between German and Deutsch is... what? I always thought people were using the word "German" to mean "Deutsch" in order to avoid confusing it with "Dutch", I don't think German and Deutsch are two different languages, although I could be wrong...
Slashdot Mirror
1) Pen and paper doesn't take forever to count. In Canada, we can get federal election results approximately 3 hours after polls close, and they're all pencil and paper. Just because the US has a larger population doesn't mean it'll take longer, just hire more people to count and that's it.
2) If the losing candidate questions the vote, he and his opponent can both witness the recount. One can hardly question again after having witnessed the recount.
It is anywhere and the _ does the _
Kinda leaves some suspense on whether this is an action game or one of them japanese erotic games ;-)
The software doesn't look for anything else on the computer, it doesn't monitor anything, etc. All it does is call home, which is perfectly legal for a game where you knew right from the start that you would need it to call home to activate.
A pirated copy of Linux... now that's something I'd like to see... :-S
I know the difference between stealing and illegal copyright infringement, and I didn't say they were the same. I brought this example (the movement of money in a bank) to try and stop people from saying that there must be physical goods involved in order for it to be theft. Theft isn't only about physical goods.
Now, downloading stuff on the 'net isn't theft either, but when I say what it is, I get modded down as flamebait, go figure...
You are completely wrong. As per the game EULA, NC Interactive owns the characters, even though it's the users that made them. Therefore, the company owns the infringing work, and they are the ones who should be sued. They're not being sued for providing a tool, they're being sued for claiming ownership and using characters they don't actually own.
STOP THE PROPAGANDA!
You couldn't sue HP because their stuff can let someone infringe your copyright/trademark. You can only sue the owner of the infringing material, so if you duplicate your artwork, you can sue yourself for owning and using a copy of your work.
Marvel isn't suing because there is a tool that allows people to make infringing characters, they are suing because NC Interactive owns the characters (as per the game EULA) and are using them to do business. There is not even a chance of it being fair use.
They won't sue just because some guy traced the Hulk. However, they will sue if some guy traced the Hulk and then used his drawn Hulk to do business (ads, posters, business cards, anything even remotely related to his business). In this case, they wouldn't sue the pen-company, they would sue the owner of the infringing drawing.
In this case, from the EULA, NC Interactive owns the character. They are using the character for doing business (it is being actively used on their MMORPG server with which they make money). Therefore, Marvel is not suing because it is possible to draw the Hulk with the game-tool, they are suing because the company owns and uses the character in their business, which is a totally valid reason to sue.
From the City of Heroes' End User Licence Agreement (paragraph 6c):
Members can upload to and create content on our servers in various forms [...] you acknowledge and agree that such Member Content is the sole property of NC Interactive.
So by uploading a Wolverine-like character, NC Interactive claims ownership of the Wolverine-like character, so NC Interactive is in trouble for owning and using a trademarked character in their game.
However...
You shall indemnify and hold NC Interactive harmless from and against any claims by third parties that your Member Content infringes upon, violates or misappropriates any of their intellectual property or proprietary rights.
So basically it's the user who's in trouble. I wonder how many of those users will get sued by NC Interactive in order to indemnify them.
If I can infiltrate your bank's computer system, substract 1000 from the number saying how much you got in your account, and add 1000 from the number saying how much I got in my account, I didn't take any physical good from you, but did I just steal from you?
Simply because file-sharing doesn't involve physical goods, which means it's not theft, doesn't mean it's not piracy, and it's not any more legal than theft.
Taking a physical CD from a music store is theft. Downloading a CD you don't own is piracy.
Yep, and year after year, Nintendo sells more and more consoles, yet the Sony/Microsoft fanboys keep saying it's dead.
Last year, Nintendo sold more consoles than either Sony or Microsoft during the holiday period, which is one of the most important period financially for game companies (and we're not even talking about the GBA here...). I'm a Nintendo fanboy and I'm proud of it, but I also respect Sony and Microsoft for what they do. Sony's and Microsoft's fanboys seem to have a hard time respecting Nintendo though. That's sad.
Since they're probably already out-of-stock and you didn't preorder it yet, chances are you won't be hearing from them.
Last I checked, Mozilla Calendar didn't work with the RC1... did they make it work with 1.0 now? (I'd check, but every firefox download site looks slashdotted at the moment...)
Once again, this is exactly what the **AA claims, but even though your friend downloads them all "just because it's free", if he couldn't get them for free, would he go see them all in the theater? Is every movie he downloads a lost sale?
DVD-rips are of a good quality, I agree. The distinction I was making was more about what the article mentionned... somebody going into a movie theater with a camcorder and filming the movie. That's a huge loss in quality.
Box office sales are affected by the camcorder piracy, not dvd-ripping.
True, but the major difference between RIAA piracy and MPAA piracy is quality...
RIAA : Someone buys a CD, rips it to mp3 (or whatever format), shares it, somebody downloads it and can listen to it with virtually no loss in quality.
MPAA : Somebody goes to a movie theater, he brings a camcorder, films the screen, shares the result. Someone downloads the movie, shitty resolution (even 800x600 doesn't compare to today's hyper-huge-screen theaters), crappy sound.
People who know they'll enjoy the movie will still go to the theater or buy the DVD because shared copies lose a lot of quality compared to the theater version (much smaller resolution and crappy sound), and also some quality when ripped from the DVD version (file decryption/compression usually affects the quality of the colors).
People who know they'll enjoy the music can still download it and have a 'good-enough' copy and most people won't know the difference.
When people figure out a way to pirate theater movies with high-quality, then it will become a major issue in MPAA's income. For now, they're just trying to make money off people who downloads their movies and who wouldn't have gone to the theater anyway.
When you ask such questions, you shouldn't have the right to backup a copy... It's just as stupid as insuring your vehicle and setting it on fire... You destroyed it on purpose, tough luck, go buy another.
As grandparent post said, you cannot accidentally microwave something.
RTFA... The plaintiff, Sean Burke, said his console stopped reading any and all discs after less than a year of use, whether those discs were games, CDs or DVDs. (emphasis mine)
Even though the console was available 3 years ago, the guy bought it recently...
I dunno about California, but up here in Québec, we have laws that force companies to offer a warranty that lasts for "a reasonable time" after initial purchase, based on the price paid for the object. Such things as "90 days parts and service" never hold up in court. Given the price tag of the Xbox, failing after less than a year makes it still under warranty, no need to file class action suit.
I just thought it was funny that he provided a link to Secunia for Red Hat but not for Windows Server 2003. He probably didn't want to show that, even though Red Hat seems to have more vulnerabilities, 0% of them are unpatched and 23% had a criticality rating of "Highly critical" and above, while Windows Server 2003 had less vulnerabilities, but 13% are still unpatched and 52% of them have a criticality rating of "Highly critical" and above.
Nah... he probably didn't want us to know that...
If it was consciousness, then what's kinda freaky about this whole thing is :
As living computers, they may someday be used to fly small unmanned airplanes or handle tasks that are dangerous for humans, such as search-and-rescue missions or bomb damage assessments.
If the pack of brain cells are conscious, they might come to a point where they simply will not want to go on dangerous missions...
D'OH!!! You got me there...
Oh so true... I once hit such a bug (be it compiler, OS or whatever, I didn't investigate that deeply), I was compiling an OpenGL/Qt application with g++ on an IRIX platform, and something just wasn't right... One of the most basic ways of debugging being sending output at just about every line of code, here's what I saw on the console :
I lost about 2 days just trying to find that stupid "bug", but damn did it feel good that I could actually prove I was not wrong on that one.
I never knew exactly what caused it, but fixing it required to scrap 2 files (declaration and implementation of the class) and write it again.
Compiler bugs *do* exist, you just need to find a way to prove it to your boss.
Now would be the time to grow up people. Stop seeing Big Brother everywhere you look. Parents want to protect their child against some material, but since there are technologies they don't understand, they don't always know how to apply control.
I doubt that just any video store clerk will let an 8-year-old rent an R-rated sexually explicit movie... should we call Big Brother on that? It's just common sense.
Violence is not something normal, and it takes a certain level of maturity to understand that. That is why movies and games are rated. An young kid probably doesn't have the maturity (read "real-life experience") to understand that games are just games.
And the difference between German and Deutsch is... what? I always thought people were using the word "German" to mean "Deutsch" in order to avoid confusing it with "Dutch", I don't think German and Deutsch are two different languages, although I could be wrong...