I find it funny how the Apple fanbois will scream and yell until they turn blue in the face about Microsoft being an evil, anti-competitive monopoly, but then, when their beloved company turns around and does something anti-competitive and monopolistic, they're suddenly "doing nothing legally, technically, ethically, morally or wrong."
May I remind you that thousands of people paid hundreds of dollars each for their iPods, with the expectation that they would be able to play the music that they legally bought and paid for on it? Now, all of a sudden, Apple is taking a step away from that premise and towards iPods being an "Apple-approved-music-only" device. And you don't see anything wrong with that? Get over your fanboyishness and look at the big picture.
So the music-distribution industry apparently cares about DRM, but only when it's *their* DRM.
Hmm... if I didn't know better I'd say these corporations weren't actually out to protect their property from evil pirates, and that they only want to cling to their own piece of the proverbial pie. But we know better than that, don't we?
What, exactly, is the point of playing a computer "game" where you evidently have to spend thousands of dollars in real money to get ahead of everyone else? Especially when you have games like World of Warcraft which are actually fun to play and don't require you to give an arm and a leg to succeed?
It seems to me that this "Project: Entropia" isn't really a game, but instead nothing more than a place for rich pseudo-gamers to show off. In a game, you get ahead through intelligence and talent, both physical and mental, not by how much of your pocketbook you have to spare.
Despite being the console manufacturer with perhaps THE biggest console market share in North America, Sony doesn't seem to have that much of a commitment to making quality products.
The new, thinner PS2 shipped with flaws such as: it won't use memory cards until they're reformatted (thus causing any saved games to be lost); it won't accept the PS2 hard drive, so Final Fantasy XI players are SOL; it won't accept the network adapters that the old PS2 system used; it breaks easily (judging by some of the reviews on Amazon.com); it overheats easily due to the absence of a cooling fan; and so forth. Now I see that these same (lack of) quality standards are going to be utilized in the PSP design.
Looks like a Nintendo DS in the stocking for me this Solstice.:)
...a new study confirming that patents do indeed stifle creativity in the software market; an analyst explaining that Microsoft is actually a monopoly; and how the DMCA can be abused to take away fair use rights.
Being an American as well, I (admittedly) have a somewhat limited understanding of how the EU works. However, from what I have come across, being an EU member state is somewhat like being a state in the USA. In other words, it's a contract, which cannot be broken.
Now, this would not be such a horrible thing if the decision to join the EU did not extend to generations beyond the one that "signed" the contract. As it is, however, even if at some point in the future there exists in a certain country a majority of people who wish to leave the EU, they cannot.
It wasn't so much the "patents are evil" message, but the fact that I was adopting an anti-globalist standpoint, that I was worried about. In my (limited) past experience with/. posters there seems to be a bias in favor of international organizations such as the UN and EU.
"But the parliament lacks the power to make laws on its own, which is probably the greatest flaw in the power structure of the EU. If it had that power, this year's decision would be final and the patent lobby would have lost for the forseeable future."
So your solution to rampant government power is... to give the government more power! Brilliant!
Seriously, though, if this were done, what would happen when a pro-patent Parliament is elected? Then you would probably be clamoring for Parliament to be stripped of its right to make laws.
The best solution, it seems to me, would be to simply decide to leave patent legislation up to the member states. That way, the EU can have its cake and eat it too, so to speak.
I'll probably get modded down for this, but oh well.
I find that this is just another example of how the EU is circumventing democracy. Instead of an enlightened body which supposedly has the needs of the body of European nations it encompasses in mind, the EU is quickly turning out to be nothing more than another bureaucracy set out to protect only its own best interests.
Even beyond that, however, there is another issue at stake. If a law is passed which standardizes software patents, all of the individual countries which make up the EU will be forced to accept it. So, say that, for example, the government of Germany would rather not accept software patents. Too bad, they'll have to anyway, despite the fact that the majority of the people there may not want it. So much for the will of the people.
So, for all of you globalists out there who saw the consolidation of Europe into a single entity as a good thing, it looks like you're reaping what you've sown. The EU is quickly becoming just another big, centralized, corporatist, United-States-esque government.
No one's saying that it has to remain hundreds of feet below the waves at all times. They could easily program the vehicle to surface, recharge itself via solar energy, and go back down again.
I wish more colleges had IT departments that made decisions like this. At the major state university that I go to, the university website and everything in it are designed to be browsed via IE. It's quite annoying when I have to close Firefox and use a slow, buggy, adware- and virus-vulnerable browser just to, say, look at courses when I'm scheduling for the next semester.
Kudos to Penn State for not falling into the "it's built into the OS so we'll use it as a standard!" trap.
"how are they selling these for almost less than just the display costs?"
This is actually a tactic that many console manufacturers use. They sell the console itself for equal to, or less than, its manufacturing cost, and then make all of their profit off of games. The rationale behind this move is that people will only buy one console (at a loss for the company), but they will then buy several games (at a significant profit.)
If you've ever wondered why you have to pay $50+ for most console games when they cost a small fraction of that price to manufacture, there's why.
This seems like something little better than that annoying feature in MS Word that tries to correct every word you type. In short, I'd rather it be made an optional feature, so that when I'm searching for Cthulhu it doesn't suggest, say, Thulium. I want to search for Lovecraftian dark gods and not the 69th element on the periodic table, doggoneit!
(Note that this suggestion is actually what was offered while typing out the Great Old One's name in MS Word.)
"What's to stop people from going to Blockbuster Video, renting a few hundred DVDs and copying them to this device?"
The short answer: nothing. But that doesn't mean that these "DVD jukeboxes" should be outlawed, since the *potential* for abuse is not good enough grounds to make something illegal.
To offer an anaolgy: Knives can be used to commit murder as easily as they can be used for legitimaate uses (say, to chop vegetables.) But no one is suggesting that we make knives illegal, since their benefit in legal use far outweighs the danger that someone might use them to stab another person. In the same way, the benefit that hardware or software that can be used to backup DVD's has in the realm of fair use far outweighs the harm that can come from a few lazy nitwits renting movies from Blockbuster and making copies of them.
Anyone who can afford a $27k jukebox must own a heck of a lot of DVD's, most likely legitimately purchased (why would someone who can afford $27k for a "DVD jukebox" waste hours illegally downloading and burning a DVD movie, or pay for a cheap bootleg?)
Regardless of the legality of the suit, the DCCA seems to be suing a company that caters to the most loyal DVD purchasers in the world. Such a misguided move can only have negative effects upon the DVD industry.
Today the United States announced that they, too, are banning "Soccer Management 2005" on the grounds that it recognizes Canada as a separate country, when it is *obviously* just part of the United States.
The result of this case could be more far-reaching than many people might think. If the court rules in favor of Avenue Media, such a ruling could open the door to laws against *any* adware being removed from one's computer.
Think about it. Say that Average User X already has Avenue Media adware on his computer. He installs software which contains DirectRevinue spyware, part of the license agreement for which stipulates that the Avenue Media software will be removed from his computer. He does so, and the Avenue Media software is removed.
Now, say that the same user has Avenue Media adware on his computer and installs a spyware remover; say, AdAware. He runs the program, and the Avenue Media software is removed. How is this scenario any different from the first? In both cases, the user willingly downloads a program that states it will remove spyware, and it does so.
If the court rules in favor of Avenue Media, it will set a precedent that software, even if the user agrees willingly to use it and to the terms of using it, cannot remove other software that the user has willingly agreed to install. Indeed, such a decision could concievably make programs like AdAware illegal.
Now, the only case in which the court could concievably rule in favor of Avenue Media and not set such a precedent would be if Direct Revenue did not state in their EULA that they would remove Avenue Media spyware. If this is the case, then it is clearly a violation of contract law. Hopefully this will either in fact be the case, or the court will make the sane decision to side with DirectRevenue.
This is obviously a very positive development, but compare American culture with that of the three other countries mentioned (Canada, Taiwan, S. Korea.) The latter two are much more urbanized (due to their concentrated population) than the United States, and therefore have a greater need for broadband connection. Even Canada has less of a rural population than the United States (because, let's face it, most of Canada is just woodlands and tundra anyway.)
It's only natural that the United States have less of a percentage demand for broadband, because a large percentage of our population doesn't live in cities (or even suburbs, for that matter.) So, why should we be concerned about whether Jim-Bob out in the boondocks of rural Idaho has broadband, when he'd only use it to check the daily farm report anyway?
Of course not. They're in cahoots with the government, who is using them to breed alien/human hybrids that can survive a global apocalypse. Therefore, they're not subject to the law.
Don't you watch TV at *all*...?
...RFID tags that track RFID tags? Then you could figure out all the new and innovative uses of RFID tags by keeping track of their progress with... RFID tags!
Just watch for lawsuits on behalf of the RFID tag manufacturers, on the contention that the RFID tags on their RFID tags invade their privacy.
...when you can have both in one! Flying SUV's! The noise pollution of the flying car and the gas-guzzling capacity of a Mac truck.
Seriously, how long do you think it will be before one of these is invented? With the American consumer market interested in style and power over economic- and environmentally-safe auto's, I'm guessing about three days after a smaller version of the flying car is available.
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May I remind you that thousands of people paid hundreds of dollars each for their iPods, with the expectation that they would be able to play the music that they legally bought and paid for on it? Now, all of a sudden, Apple is taking a step away from that premise and towards iPods being an "Apple-approved-music-only" device. And you don't see anything wrong with that? Get over your fanboyishness and look at the big picture.
Hmm... if I didn't know better I'd say these corporations weren't actually out to protect their property from evil pirates, and that they only want to cling to their own piece of the proverbial pie. But we know better than that, don't we?
Don't we...?
It seems to me that this "Project: Entropia" isn't really a game, but instead nothing more than a place for rich pseudo-gamers to show off. In a game, you get ahead through intelligence and talent, both physical and mental, not by how much of your pocketbook you have to spare.
The new, thinner PS2 shipped with flaws such as: it won't use memory cards until they're reformatted (thus causing any saved games to be lost); it won't accept the PS2 hard drive, so Final Fantasy XI players are SOL; it won't accept the network adapters that the old PS2 system used; it breaks easily (judging by some of the reviews on Amazon.com); it overheats easily due to the absence of a cooling fan; and so forth. Now I see that these same (lack of) quality standards are going to be utilized in the PSP design.
Looks like a Nintendo DS in the stocking for me this Solstice. :)
...a new study confirming that patents do indeed stifle creativity in the software market; an analyst explaining that Microsoft is actually a monopoly; and how the DMCA can be abused to take away fair use rights.
Now, this would not be such a horrible thing if the decision to join the EU did not extend to generations beyond the one that "signed" the contract. As it is, however, even if at some point in the future there exists in a certain country a majority of people who wish to leave the EU, they cannot.
Then again, I could be wrong.
So your solution to rampant government power is... to give the government more power! Brilliant!
Seriously, though, if this were done, what would happen when a pro-patent Parliament is elected? Then you would probably be clamoring for Parliament to be stripped of its right to make laws.
The best solution, it seems to me, would be to simply decide to leave patent legislation up to the member states. That way, the EU can have its cake and eat it too, so to speak.
I find that this is just another example of how the EU is circumventing democracy. Instead of an enlightened body which supposedly has the needs of the body of European nations it encompasses in mind, the EU is quickly turning out to be nothing more than another bureaucracy set out to protect only its own best interests.
Even beyond that, however, there is another issue at stake. If a law is passed which standardizes software patents, all of the individual countries which make up the EU will be forced to accept it. So, say that, for example, the government of Germany would rather not accept software patents. Too bad, they'll have to anyway, despite the fact that the majority of the people there may not want it. So much for the will of the people.
So, for all of you globalists out there who saw the consolidation of Europe into a single entity as a good thing, it looks like you're reaping what you've sown. The EU is quickly becoming just another big, centralized, corporatist, United-States-esque government.
No one's saying that it has to remain hundreds of feet below the waves at all times. They could easily program the vehicle to surface, recharge itself via solar energy, and go back down again.
Well, then they're not exactly autonomous, are they?
Kudos to Penn State for not falling into the "it's built into the OS so we'll use it as a standard!" trap.
If you've ever wondered why you have to pay $50+ for most console games when they cost a small fraction of that price to manufacture, there's why.
(Note that this suggestion is actually what was offered while typing out the Great Old One's name in MS Word.)
The short answer: nothing. But that doesn't mean that these "DVD jukeboxes" should be outlawed, since the *potential* for abuse is not good enough grounds to make something illegal.
To offer an anaolgy: Knives can be used to commit murder as easily as they can be used for legitimaate uses (say, to chop vegetables.) But no one is suggesting that we make knives illegal, since their benefit in legal use far outweighs the danger that someone might use them to stab another person. In the same way, the benefit that hardware or software that can be used to backup DVD's has in the realm of fair use far outweighs the harm that can come from a few lazy nitwits renting movies from Blockbuster and making copies of them.
Regardless of the legality of the suit, the DCCA seems to be suing a company that caters to the most loyal DVD purchasers in the world. Such a misguided move can only have negative effects upon the DVD industry.
Today the United States announced that they, too, are banning "Soccer Management 2005" on the grounds that it recognizes Canada as a separate country, when it is *obviously* just part of the United States.
Think about it. Say that Average User X already has Avenue Media adware on his computer. He installs software which contains DirectRevinue spyware, part of the license agreement for which stipulates that the Avenue Media software will be removed from his computer. He does so, and the Avenue Media software is removed.
Now, say that the same user has Avenue Media adware on his computer and installs a spyware remover; say, AdAware. He runs the program, and the Avenue Media software is removed. How is this scenario any different from the first? In both cases, the user willingly downloads a program that states it will remove spyware, and it does so.
If the court rules in favor of Avenue Media, it will set a precedent that software, even if the user agrees willingly to use it and to the terms of using it, cannot remove other software that the user has willingly agreed to install. Indeed, such a decision could concievably make programs like AdAware illegal.
Now, the only case in which the court could concievably rule in favor of Avenue Media and not set such a precedent would be if Direct Revenue did not state in their EULA that they would remove Avenue Media spyware. If this is the case, then it is clearly a violation of contract law. Hopefully this will either in fact be the case, or the court will make the sane decision to side with DirectRevenue.
It's only natural that the United States have less of a percentage demand for broadband, because a large percentage of our population doesn't live in cities (or even suburbs, for that matter.) So, why should we be concerned about whether Jim-Bob out in the boondocks of rural Idaho has broadband, when he'd only use it to check the daily farm report anyway?
Of course not. They're in cahoots with the government, who is using them to breed alien/human hybrids that can survive a global apocalypse. Therefore, they're not subject to the law. Don't you watch TV at *all*...?
Just watch for lawsuits on behalf of the RFID tag manufacturers, on the contention that the RFID tags on their RFID tags invade their privacy.
*sigh*
Can we please go back to a society where every new technology couldn't be perverted to the insatiable desires of the advertising industry?
...birth of *which* Empire? The one in the movie... or the one which Lucas could buy with all the impending merchandising royalties?
Seriously, how long do you think it will be before one of these is invented? With the American consumer market interested in style and power over economic- and environmentally-safe auto's, I'm guessing about three days after a smaller version of the flying car is available.
Maybe it's a warning against browsing /. using IE.