The point isn't so much that the book is available in a free format, the point is that this is supposed to be the final book of the series so everybody expects some kind of sad or in other way surprising ending.
The larger concern seems to be that people will read the ending before the book is officially released and then blab about it, effectively "ruining" the book (as if something as badly written as these books are could be ruined) for all the kids who marathon read the book in the first 24 hours.
Consider the following hypothetical case and compare it to the real case described in the summary:
Amazon announces a buy one get one free promotion on boxed sets. Many people take advantage of this and their credit cards are charged accordingly.
Several weeks later, Amazon announces that they made a mistake and that the promotion should have been buy one get one half off and announces that buyers have to return both items unopened or else they will be charged an extra 50%.
In the real case, the buyers should have known that it was a mistake, but in the hypothetical case the buyers would probably be surprised by the request for additional money.
Consumer protection law can not treat the two cases differently. In both cases there was a summary page which listed the merchandise ordered and the cost and the buyer had to approve the transaction. Either that is binding or it is not binding. In order to protect the consumer from the hypothetical case which more clearly represents an abuse on the part of Amazon, consumer law has put the burden on the seller to get their prices straight. Which doesn't seem too unreasonable.
This attitude disgusts me (her alleged attitude not yours).
She didn't order chocolate ice cream and then say "well maybe I should have ordered strawberry".
She (and many others) voted to send people to fight and probably die. If she (and others) can't be bothered to think about it before taking that action, I am disgusted.
from an unmarked brown file at the bottom of a locked filing cabinet that is sitting next to the boiler in the basement underneath the House of Commons
But was there a sign that said, "Beware of the Leopard"?
A 0day of this kind is worth at least twice that on the black market, mostly to the botnet creators who are the base of all the spam we get
There have been a few posts of this nature in this discussion.
You seem to be saying that if someone finds an exploit they have the following choices:
(a) Turn in the exploit to the good guys for $10,000
(b) Sell the exploit to the bad guys for $20,000 and know that they will be contributing to human misery
I can't be the only person who would select the first option.
where is the discrete vendor warning that traditional researchers give before going public?
They go into this subject on their website. They allege that the current system of vendor warning (and they are referring to Microsoft although they never say it) doesn't work because the vendor has no incentive to fix the bug right away (within minutes or days).
To a degree, they seem correct. It can take months for MS to roll out a fix to a bug that is reported secretly by a good guy researcher. In the meantime, MS users are exposed to this risk while MS hopes nobody is exploiting it. But if a good guy researcher can find the bug, isn't is reasonable to assume that a bad guy researcher found the bug also and is exploiting it?
How would vendor (and by vendor I mean MS) change their behavior if all bugs were released publicly?
Where is the incentive for MS to find its own bugs before release if research companies are finding the bugs after release and giving MS months to make the fix?
The machines print out paper ballots on a roll when they are done, and we do NOT get to see the roll
In Chicago before my voting card was returned to me I had to examine the paper roll one page at a time (it is under glass so I can't fiddle with it) and confirm that it accurately reflected my vote.
Sorry, I didn't notice the make of the voting machine.
Here in Chicago, most parking meters have a time limit for parking. So it will say 25c / 30 minutes, 2 hour limit.
In Chicago, it appears that enforcement of this is half hearted (compared with places like Carmel where they use chalk to mark the tires to enforce the time limit).
Anyway, it would not be hard for the cell phone parking meter to enforce the time limit. So after 4 quarters, the parking meter won't take any more money and the driver has to move.
Wouldn't it be great if the parking meter could tell that you hadn't paid or moved the car and then issued the cell phone an instant meter violation charge? I believe that is $50 in Chicago. Plus a 30 cent convenience fee.
Re:Buy the Game and Pay Again to Play It - NOT!!!!
on
Blizzcon Writeup
·
· Score: 1
How hard is it to do the math? Charge me $20 for the game and $18/month to play. Over the course of 18 months, you've actually made an extra $4 per player and you likely have more players
I think it is a mistake to assume that they haven't done the math.
I didn't buy the game, but some of the people at work did and none of them lasted a year. They had a tremendous amount of fun for the first few months, but then they found that each month they were playing it less and finally suspended their accounts.
Also, you might want to consider that Blizzard set their pricing structure to attract the committed player. By charging $50 for the game, they erect a barrier to keep out people who would just try the game out for a week or two and then bail.
I won't pretend that I know why they use the pricing structure they do, but if I was going to hypothesize I would start from the assumption that they thought it through and came up with a strategy that maximizes profits.
The first few levels were difficult, when you're at a small size. But...
Thanks for pointing this out, and thanks to the others who also followed up my comment by offering advice on this game.
I had been planning to give the sequel a try, and because of your comment I will definitely try harder this time.
One of the drawbacks of renting games is that I am pretty quick to dump them if I don't get hooked immediately. If I bought the game I probably would have tried harder to get my money's worth, and I might have discovered that they game got more fun as I advanced.
I won't say that I despised it, but I rented it from Gamefly and after playing for about 20 minutes I sent it back. I thought it was quirky and liked the music, but it was just too repetitve for me.
I'll probably give the second one a try, even though I kind of expect more of the same.
I agree with your sentiment, but if I was to try to look at it from a paranoid management perspective I would argue as follows:
3.5" floppies don't hold much data
My office desktop doesn't have a cd/dvd burner
If someone emails out sensitive data, there is a record of it
So I guess the advantages of a flash drive are that it holds a lot of data, requires no special hardware beyond what is found on the simplest of laptops, and there is no record of information being stolen.
Is that sufficient to develop a special policy? I don't think so, but I don't have to worry about explaining security breaches.
I have to vote that you are more evil than not evil.
Of all the things you list, the only one that requires you to write a cookie is to be able to say that "John Smith" visited our site 3 times a week.
How much value does that add to the user? Speaking for myself, I rejected cookies because I felt that any value that this might add was more than negated by cookie abuse.
ok, now most security measures i can at least objectively see where they're coming from, but what is this supposed to gain for anyone?
The Microsoft link claims this is to protect you from hardware attacks. If I understand correctly, there is a concern that someone could write a hardware virus that would change the screen resolution from 640x480 to 1280x1024 multiple times each second. It is expected that this could physically damage the monitor.
But if the monitor is authenticated at both resolutions, then it seems the PVP-OPM would not stop the attack. So I don't really see any protection here.
I RTFA, and while the author doesn't actually say much, it seems to me that the point of this is to discourage someone from ripping a DVD and watching it on their computer. This is assuming that their video card won't do DVD resolution.
At the risk of being modded redundant, this is yet another DRM idea that will have no effect on the people it is intended to stop, and will inconvenience everyone else.
What happens when e-ink/e-paper eventually works and can be purchased in a "book" form, like the Sony thing?
How much of the cost of a book is in the materials, printing, distribution, and shelving of the physical book? Would the ebook you describe sell electronically for $3?
I haven't bought a book (for myself) in years. I use the library. This is a system wherein I pay to a subscription service and get to read all the books I want, with the caveat that I can't have too many at the same time and I may have to wait a while for a specific title. Now that I mention it, I do the same with movies (Netflix). And console games (Gamefly).
Don't get too hung up on people who will read the book without paying the author for it. Peole have always loaned books to friends, sold books to used bookstores, or just left them behind on the train for somebody else to read. All of these methods result in somebody reading a book without paying the author, and yet the writing industry hasn't collapsed.
I must have missed that development -- is he jumping from the sinking MNF ship or did ESPN kick him out?
Starting in 2006, Monday Night Football will be televised by ESPN, not ABC.
Also starting in 2006, NBC will be televising Sunday Night Football, not ESPN.
Since ESPN has a broadcast team with nothing to do (the three morons who did the Sunday night games, I don't know their names) they could do MNF. Which freed up Madden to join the new team at NBC.
Is protectionism a factor in the same people many people would only buy domestic cars?
I don't know if I would call this protectionism (maybe nationalism?) but I agree with your example.
The same mindset that made Americans (back in the 70s/80s) insist that American cars were better than Japanese cars, despite overwhemling contrary evidence, probably exists in some Japanese making them insist that Japanese consoles are better than American consoles.
What, in your opinion, would make primary and secondary education as good as possible?
Clearly there are excellent schools, just as there are crappy schools. Since at least one excellent school exists, the solution to the problem is trivial, copy that school.
I choose to interpret the question thusly:
What, in your opinion, would make primary and secondary education as good as possible for everyone?
Society cannot make great schools for everyone if the elite/policy makers can opt out of the system and send their children to private schools.
By abolishing private schools, parents who can make a difference in the public schools would make a difference in the public schools because that's where there kids would be.
Slashdot Mirror
The point isn't so much that the book is available in a free format, the point is that this is supposed to be the final book of the series so everybody expects some kind of sad or in other way surprising ending.
The larger concern seems to be that people will read the ending before the book is officially released and then blab about it, effectively "ruining" the book (as if something as badly written as these books are could be ruined) for all the kids who marathon read the book in the first 24 hours.
About $2,000 USD would equate to 1,000,000 CFA (Central African Francs).
But it would be more fun to go to Jamaica to convert the money than it would be to go to Cameroon.
Consider the following hypothetical case and compare it to the real case described in the summary:
Amazon announces a buy one get one free promotion on boxed sets. Many people take advantage of this and their credit cards are charged accordingly.
Several weeks later, Amazon announces that they made a mistake and that the promotion should have been buy one get one half off and announces that buyers have to return both items unopened or else they will be charged an extra 50%.
In the real case, the buyers should have known that it was a mistake, but in the hypothetical case the buyers would probably be surprised by the request for additional money.
Consumer protection law can not treat the two cases differently. In both cases there was a summary page which listed the merchandise ordered and the cost and the buyer had to approve the transaction. Either that is binding or it is not binding. In order to protect the consumer from the hypothetical case which more clearly represents an abuse on the part of Amazon, consumer law has put the burden on the seller to get their prices straight. Which doesn't seem too unreasonable.
You can claim up to 10 times the price of a CD for damages
This would be generous if Sony had damaged a CD. But Sony damaged a PC, something that generally costs 100 times the price of a CD.
While I don't think Sony should have to buy everyone a new PC, I do think Sony got off light.
This attitude disgusts me (her alleged attitude not yours).
She didn't order chocolate ice cream and then say "well maybe I should have ordered strawberry".
She (and many others) voted to send people to fight and probably die. If she (and others) can't be bothered to think about it before taking that action, I am disgusted.
A very popular credit ranking in the US was developed by Fair Isaac & Co (FICO) and is generally used when applying for a home mortgage.
from an unmarked brown file at the bottom of a locked filing cabinet that is sitting next to the boiler in the basement underneath the House of Commons
But was there a sign that said, "Beware of the Leopard"?
Question: Would you go to jail for 10 years for US$200mil?
I would not choose to trade 10 years in jail for US$200M, but given the following choices:
(a) 10 years in jail and $US200M
(b) 3 years in jail and $0
I would probably pick (a).
A 0day of this kind is worth at least twice that on the black market, mostly to the botnet creators who are the base of all the spam we get
There have been a few posts of this nature in this discussion.
You seem to be saying that if someone finds an exploit they have the following choices:
(a) Turn in the exploit to the good guys for $10,000
(b) Sell the exploit to the bad guys for $20,000 and know that they will be contributing to human misery
I can't be the only person who would select the first option.
Now if it was $10,000 vs $20,000,000...
Slacker
Since the decision to remove it was made internally, not forced by external people
I didn't RTFA, but you didn't even RTFB. It specifically states that the game was pulled because of external pressure.
where is the discrete vendor warning that traditional researchers give before going public?
They go into this subject on their website. They allege that the current system of vendor warning (and they are referring to Microsoft although they never say it) doesn't work because the vendor has no incentive to fix the bug right away (within minutes or days).
To a degree, they seem correct. It can take months for MS to roll out a fix to a bug that is reported secretly by a good guy researcher. In the meantime, MS users are exposed to this risk while MS hopes nobody is exploiting it. But if a good guy researcher can find the bug, isn't is reasonable to assume that a bad guy researcher found the bug also and is exploiting it?
How would vendor (and by vendor I mean MS) change their behavior if all bugs were released publicly?
Where is the incentive for MS to find its own bugs before release if research companies are finding the bugs after release and giving MS months to make the fix?
The machines print out paper ballots on a roll when they are done, and we do NOT get to see the roll
In Chicago before my voting card was returned to me I had to examine the paper roll one page at a time (it is under glass so I can't fiddle with it) and confirm that it accurately reflected my vote.
Sorry, I didn't notice the make of the voting machine.
Here in Chicago, most parking meters have a time limit for parking. So it will say 25c / 30 minutes, 2 hour limit.
In Chicago, it appears that enforcement of this is half hearted (compared with places like Carmel where they use chalk to mark the tires to enforce the time limit).
Anyway, it would not be hard for the cell phone parking meter to enforce the time limit. So after 4 quarters, the parking meter won't take any more money and the driver has to move.
Wouldn't it be great if the parking meter could tell that you hadn't paid or moved the car and then issued the cell phone an instant meter violation charge? I believe that is $50 in Chicago. Plus a 30 cent convenience fee.
How hard is it to do the math? Charge me $20 for the game and $18/month to play. Over the course of 18 months, you've actually made an extra $4 per player and you likely have more players
I think it is a mistake to assume that they haven't done the math.
I didn't buy the game, but some of the people at work did and none of them lasted a year. They had a tremendous amount of fun for the first few months, but then they found that each month they were playing it less and finally suspended their accounts.
Also, you might want to consider that Blizzard set their pricing structure to attract the committed player. By charging $50 for the game, they erect a barrier to keep out people who would just try the game out for a week or two and then bail.
I won't pretend that I know why they use the pricing structure they do, but if I was going to hypothesize I would start from the assumption that they thought it through and came up with a strategy that maximizes profits.
The first few levels were difficult, when you're at a small size. But ...
Thanks for pointing this out, and thanks to the others who also followed up my comment by offering advice on this game.
I had been planning to give the sequel a try, and because of your comment I will definitely try harder this time.
One of the drawbacks of renting games is that I am pretty quick to dump them if I don't get hooked immediately. If I bought the game I probably would have tried harder to get my money's worth, and I might have discovered that they game got more fun as I advanced.
Does anyone else really despise this game?
I won't say that I despised it, but I rented it from Gamefly and after playing for about 20 minutes I sent it back. I thought it was quirky and liked the music, but it was just too repetitve for me.
I'll probably give the second one a try, even though I kind of expect more of the same.
I think it might be you
Did you try the hat and cake links?
I agree with your sentiment, but if I was to try to look at it from a paranoid management perspective I would argue as follows:
3.5" floppies don't hold much data
My office desktop doesn't have a cd/dvd burner
If someone emails out sensitive data, there is a record of it
So I guess the advantages of a flash drive are that it holds a lot of data, requires no special hardware beyond what is found on the simplest of laptops, and there is no record of information being stolen.
Is that sufficient to develop a special policy? I don't think so, but I don't have to worry about explaining security breaches.
I have to vote that you are more evil than not evil.
Of all the things you list, the only one that requires you to write a cookie is to be able to say that "John Smith" visited our site 3 times a week.
How much value does that add to the user? Speaking for myself, I rejected cookies because I felt that any value that this might add was more than negated by cookie abuse.
ok, now most security measures i can at least objectively see where they're coming from, but what is this supposed to gain for anyone?
The Microsoft link claims this is to protect you from hardware attacks. If I understand correctly, there is a concern that someone could write a hardware virus that would change the screen resolution from 640x480 to 1280x1024 multiple times each second. It is expected that this could physically damage the monitor.
But if the monitor is authenticated at both resolutions, then it seems the PVP-OPM would not stop the attack. So I don't really see any protection here.
I RTFA, and while the author doesn't actually say much, it seems to me that the point of this is to discourage someone from ripping a DVD and watching it on their computer. This is assuming that their video card won't do DVD resolution.
At the risk of being modded redundant, this is yet another DRM idea that will have no effect on the people it is intended to stop, and will inconvenience everyone else.
What happens when e-ink/e-paper eventually works and can be purchased in a "book" form, like the Sony thing?
How much of the cost of a book is in the materials, printing, distribution, and shelving of the physical book? Would the ebook you describe sell electronically for $3?
I haven't bought a book (for myself) in years. I use the library. This is a system wherein I pay to a subscription service and get to read all the books I want, with the caveat that I can't have too many at the same time and I may have to wait a while for a specific title. Now that I mention it, I do the same with movies (Netflix). And console games (Gamefly).
Don't get too hung up on people who will read the book without paying the author for it. Peole have always loaned books to friends, sold books to used bookstores, or just left them behind on the train for somebody else to read. All of these methods result in somebody reading a book without paying the author, and yet the writing industry hasn't collapsed.
I must have missed that development -- is he jumping from the sinking MNF ship or did ESPN kick him out?
Starting in 2006, Monday Night Football will be televised by ESPN, not ABC.
Also starting in 2006, NBC will be televising Sunday Night Football, not ESPN.
Since ESPN has a broadcast team with nothing to do (the three morons who did the Sunday night games, I don't know their names) they could do MNF. Which freed up Madden to join the new team at NBC.
Is protectionism a factor in the same people many people would only buy domestic cars?
I don't know if I would call this protectionism (maybe nationalism?) but I agree with your example.
The same mindset that made Americans (back in the 70s/80s) insist that American cars were better than Japanese cars, despite overwhemling contrary evidence, probably exists in some Japanese making them insist that Japanese consoles are better than American consoles.
Although in this case they are probably right.
What, in your opinion, would make primary and secondary education as good as possible?
Clearly there are excellent schools, just as there are crappy schools. Since at least one excellent school exists, the solution to the problem is trivial, copy that school.
I choose to interpret the question thusly:
What, in your opinion, would make primary and secondary education as good as possible for everyone?
Society cannot make great schools for everyone if the elite/policy makers can opt out of the system and send their children to private schools.
By abolishing private schools, parents who can make a difference in the public schools would make a difference in the public schools because that's where there kids would be.