And I speak as someone who makes games as a hobby. The poor indie developer who is always cited as being pushed out of the market by legislation.
But frankly, it's the big companies that make the profits from this non-existing consumer protection. It's more than high time to change that. I want to buy software and be sure that it works. Sure, it still may not be a great game. And it would be overkill to not allow for some bugs. But there've been several cases of games shipping that couldn't even run without a patch. It's ridiculous and high time that a minimum of consumer protection is established.
Regulation is bad. Period. The loudness of advertising is none of the states business.
Where I live, the "state" is merely what "we, the people" put in place to do the management. In other words, "the government" is the executive agent of "us, the people".
So, if it's our business, it's the governments business. Because the government is acting on our behalf.
And something that annoys the vast majority of people certainly is "our business".
No, there is no "fair" way to write the text when you already know that those subject to the rules will hire very expensive law firms to find any and all loopholes.
I have rules in my online game (battlemaster.org) - and one of them is roughly "attempts to exploit the rules and violating their spirit while formally abiding by the words double the punishment". It's time the legal system adds a rule like that, especially for corporations who willfully and intentionally choose that route.
We have "contempt of court" already. It's time to add "contempt of the meaning of the law" to it.
It shows us again and again just how small the "gods" of all the various religions are, and that whether or not there may be a god out there, the one written about in the holy books of all the major religions certainly isn't it, because those books and "gods" deeds in it are so clearly limited by the limits of human imagination of the times they were written in.
in an Internet era, where price information travels rapidly, prices converge towards fixed prices.
Sorry, you're 10 years behind. That's the original theory, but capitalism has since evolved away from the silly "free market" concept.
Or have you seen the price of Windos "converge" in any meaningful way? Have you missed the article a few stories down about price fixing in the LCD market? The many other examples of price manipulations?
The thing about this patent is that "price information" itself is manipulated. Your price information is meaningless to me, because I can not get it. When the price information is about different prices on the seller side, we as buyers can go to the cheaper seller. But this patent is about changing prices on the buyer side. There's not a whole lot the buyer can do, and since he doesn't have any market reactions available, there's no converging influence.
Approaches like this are pretty direct attacks on why free markets work.
Yes, they are. Surprised to see a direct attack on the free market by a convicted monopolist?;-)
Nobody, and I'm serious on that, not the most convinced communist, not the most radical islamic fundamentalist, hates a free market as much as major corporations. Pretty much everything that determines a free market is an obstacle towards their ultimate goal: Unlimited, guaranteed profit.
I'd have thought after the financial crises more people would've noticed.
Yes, times have changed a lot. "Society" is no longer the thing you live in, it's the thing you have to put up with when you leave the house.
Quite frankly, unless something dramatic changes and people respect the rules again, we need massively improved enforcement, especially on the small rules. Ignoring the "no smoking" sign, talking on the phone while driving - these are minor crimes, but they instill disrespect for others and society in people. Heck, that's not a theory, it's been tested and proven correct several times.
I see smokers ignoring the "no smoking" signs every day on my way to work. That's a good example because it creates actual, physical harm on others, not just potential danger. I'm not for harsher fines. In fact, I think moderate fines are much better. But they need to be enforced. Strictly and reliably. A $10,000 fine coupled with a 0.1% chance of being caught may be mathematically identical to a $100 fine and a 10% chance to be caught, but people's actual reactions to the scenarios are vastly different (again, there's been research on that, I'm just too lazy to walk over to the book shelves).
Make "enforcement days". Send police officers or even temps out on those days with the express goal of catching every single one who talks on the phone or texts while driving. Do that every month or two. The fines collected will almost certainly pay for the whole operation. After the 2nd or 3rd time caught, lots of people will reconsider. And those with a severe learning disability will pay for the next operations.
And as I said, if you think police officers are too valuable to be wasted on making the roads safer, hire temp workers for the job. Photographs with both the driver and the license plate visible would probably do, after all they do for speeding.
Can we please re-introduce the death penalty for stupidity? Back in the days, before the whole "civilization" nonsense, fuckers like these wouldn't have survived long enough to demonstrate that there is a perfect vaccuum in this universe - inside their heads.
Yes, the privacy policy may be better. But - especially with Microsoft - what is actually happening is a whole lot more important, wouldn't you think?
Now, if history is worth anything, we know how MS plays in markets where it doesn't dominate: Nice on the outside, underhanded on the inside, and ready for the bait-and-switch as soon as they've risen to dominance.
Don't you remember the comments on this very site when the browser of the day was still Netscape and MS was struggling? How many good features and standards compatability they had over Netscape? Look where all that went once they had crushed Netscape. Look how they're slowly turning around to that approach again now that their dominance is threatened.
Make no mistake. MS only ever competes on features, quality or privacy as long as it helps them grow. There's no reason to trust them any further than you can throw the Eifeltower.
Like any other OS, you can run Windows securely if you don't do stupid things.
Like any car, you can parallel park an 18-wheeler, if you are careful enough.
Sure, you can do it. Some OSes just make it easier, and some make it a challenge. I dare say Windos (any version) is in the later category. Heck, it usually comes with a fine selection of ad- and spyware pre-installed thanks to your friendly OEM.
'If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place.'
Strictly speaking, he's correct. If you take "anyone" to mean "nobody should ever know" in this context. As soon as you replace "anyone" with something a little closer to real-life, say "something that you don't want too many people to know", things change dramatically.
My love letters are in the "someone can know them" category - but that "someone" is well-defined, and it isn't Google. What I do in my bedroom is something I share with at least one person anyways, and may tell to a few select others - the keyword being "select". My medical issues are between me and my doctor. And so on.
In every case, the strictly "if you don't want anyone to know" is true. But that "anyone" is usually one specific person.
How about you simply refer to the other 200 discussions we've all had on the subject, instead of reading all the replies here - again?
What you're saying is untrue, and would probably cross the line into libel in many countries. Especially since you've apparently been around for a short while and know that you're spreading bullshit.
I wonder how long it would be before a bunch of lawyers make a company with a quick Firefox clone and sue EU/Microsoft for not being included in that ballot deal.
Yes, they can do that - as soon as their clone makes it into the top five list. You read the summary, you even show signs of having some understanding, as you yourself wrote "the other 4" just above this. You know that what you're saying is bonkers. So why do it? What's your goal?
it would be foolish to embark on an expensive exercise like this unless there was a 'we have more of users' data and can be profiling them better' angle.
I question your precondition that this is expensive. As I already said: If you're already operating on the scale that Google does, then adding public DNS servers is what? A thousandth of a percent of your operating cost?
EIther you believe in your principles, or you don't. If you believe in your principles except when ignoring them hurts someone you don't like, you are a hypocrite.
Then I am that, because I believe that principles are for people who find life too confusing to re-align their beliefs every now and then. Reality changes constantly. Adaptation is quite a useful thing.
The law protects everyone equally. It's not ok to steal from a bully. There is no "he needed killin'" defense (even in Texas). If it's proper to sue MS over this patent, then it's ok to sue anyone who infringes this patent.
Yes, it is. And as I said: Patent trolls are an abomination. And still I can't find myself feeling sorry for Microsoft. Because what is "proper" and what is right are sometimes different things, and not easily encoded into law. Yes, there is no "he needed killing" defense, and rightly so, because the legal system is easily gamed. But in real-life courts - and I've been to real-life courts up to the highest levels so I know a little about what I'm talking about - it exists. Judges, especially in the higher courts, do make these judgement calls and then look how the law needs to be applied to justify them.
Very cool, but of course there are questions about Google's true motivations behind knowing every site you visit.
Nonsense.
They want to cut the ISPs and other DNS providers out of their (dishonest) ad revenue streams. For a lot of competitors, this is virtually the only straw left (AOL, anyone? I know at least in Germany if they hadn't forced the marketing of the "Alice" ISP to add such a DNS-misdirect, their portal and search space would be able to count its visits in "hits per hour").
It hurts their competitors while giving Google an image plus. And the amount of overhead and traffic is neglectable if you already operate on the scale that Google does.
you actually want to cheer for Microsoft this time
Please don't tell me what I want to do. Thank you.
Some people deserve what they get, even if I wouldn't wish it on anyone else. Patent trolls are abominations, but so is Microsoft, and which of them is the worse one is strictly a judgement call.
But I wouldn't be very surprised if it's all true. It is a high-risk investment. It was much more likely that it would've turned up nothing at all. People regularily pay a few bucks for a slip of paper and one of them is a millionaire by the end of the week. Would you believe that? It's called the lottery.
The business model of the piracy exchange sounds a lot like that, except that they're drawing ships, not numbers.:-)
Out of curiosity, does anyone know why these ships aren't arming themselves?
Yes, many reasons were posted yesterday, on that other pirate story.
The only reason piracy is profitable is because freighters don't fight back. If all the ships worth hijacking moving through the area had a single M2 Browning, piracy would pretty much end.
Oh yeah. As we all learnt from history, back in the 16th century, piracy came to an instant stop as soon as they put a few cannons on those merchant ships. Right? Uh... wrong timeline, friend.
As long as the risk is less than the profit, the only thing that arming the freighters will accomplish is creating more dead sailors, because the pirates will very certainly shoot back. And if you kill their friends and they manage to board you anyways, the question "revenge or ransom?" may be a real tough one.
It seems that you're the idiot. For all we know, she did get her share.
And I'd be surprised if not. Criminal societies generally adhere more strongly to their codes of ethic than civil society. Because there are fewer other forces that bind them, and trust is more important.
And, of course, for the simple practical reason that if the guys want to get future investors for their next trips, they'd better build a reputation of actually paying them.
No, really. And I say that as an outspoken opponent of software patent.
His most important sentence is It is obvious that software products are not "software ideas". - and that's what's wrong with the patent system. A hundred years ago, you had to submit a working model to get a patent. These days, you can patent software ideas and business processes.
When we speak about "software patents" we are really talking about monopoly rights on algorithms. And that's as stupid an idea as a copyright on a number. What the author apparently means when he talks about "software patents" is a complete product, a working implementation of a concept that can be demonstrated to do what the list of claims contains. That's a bit of a different animal than about 99.999% of the software patents issued during the past 10 years.
And I agree that a bit of protection on that would be nice for those who invented it. We can discuss whether or not patents is the right tool, or copyright, or some new form, but that's not important.
Slashdot Mirror
And I speak as someone who makes games as a hobby. The poor indie developer who is always cited as being pushed out of the market by legislation.
But frankly, it's the big companies that make the profits from this non-existing consumer protection. It's more than high time to change that. I want to buy software and be sure that it works. Sure, it still may not be a great game. And it would be overkill to not allow for some bugs. But there've been several cases of games shipping that couldn't even run without a patch. It's ridiculous and high time that a minimum of consumer protection is established.
Regulation is bad. Period. The loudness of advertising is none of the states business.
Where I live, the "state" is merely what "we, the people" put in place to do the management. In other words, "the government" is the executive agent of "us, the people".
So, if it's our business, it's the governments business. Because the government is acting on our behalf.
And something that annoys the vast majority of people certainly is "our business".
No, there is no "fair" way to write the text when you already know that those subject to the rules will hire very expensive law firms to find any and all loopholes.
I have rules in my online game (battlemaster.org) - and one of them is roughly "attempts to exploit the rules and violating their spirit while formally abiding by the words double the punishment". It's time the legal system adds a rule like that, especially for corporations who willfully and intentionally choose that route.
We have "contempt of court" already. It's time to add "contempt of the meaning of the law" to it.
I love science.
It shows us again and again just how small the "gods" of all the various religions are, and that whether or not there may be a god out there, the one written about in the holy books of all the major religions certainly isn't it, because those books and "gods" deeds in it are so clearly limited by the limits of human imagination of the times they were written in.
Is Islam an economic system?
No, but it contains rules on economic behaviour. There are islamic banks, for example. Google is your friend.
in an Internet era, where price information travels rapidly, prices converge towards fixed prices.
Sorry, you're 10 years behind. That's the original theory, but capitalism has since evolved away from the silly "free market" concept.
Or have you seen the price of Windos "converge" in any meaningful way? Have you missed the article a few stories down about price fixing in the LCD market? The many other examples of price manipulations?
The thing about this patent is that "price information" itself is manipulated. Your price information is meaningless to me, because I can not get it. When the price information is about different prices on the seller side, we as buyers can go to the cheaper seller. But this patent is about changing prices on the buyer side. There's not a whole lot the buyer can do, and since he doesn't have any market reactions available, there's no converging influence.
Approaches like this are pretty direct attacks on why free markets work.
Yes, they are. Surprised to see a direct attack on the free market by a convicted monopolist? ;-)
Nobody, and I'm serious on that, not the most convinced communist, not the most radical islamic fundamentalist, hates a free market as much as major corporations. Pretty much everything that determines a free market is an obstacle towards their ultimate goal: Unlimited, guaranteed profit.
I'd have thought after the financial crises more people would've noticed.
Yes, times have changed a lot. "Society" is no longer the thing you live in, it's the thing you have to put up with when you leave the house.
Quite frankly, unless something dramatic changes and people respect the rules again, we need massively improved enforcement, especially on the small rules. Ignoring the "no smoking" sign, talking on the phone while driving - these are minor crimes, but they instill disrespect for others and society in people. Heck, that's not a theory, it's been tested and proven correct several times.
I see smokers ignoring the "no smoking" signs every day on my way to work. That's a good example because it creates actual, physical harm on others, not just potential danger.
I'm not for harsher fines. In fact, I think moderate fines are much better. But they need to be enforced. Strictly and reliably. A $10,000 fine coupled with a 0.1% chance of being caught may be mathematically identical to a $100 fine and a 10% chance to be caught, but people's actual reactions to the scenarios are vastly different (again, there's been research on that, I'm just too lazy to walk over to the book shelves).
Make "enforcement days". Send police officers or even temps out on those days with the express goal of catching every single one who talks on the phone or texts while driving. Do that every month or two. The fines collected will almost certainly pay for the whole operation. After the 2nd or 3rd time caught, lots of people will reconsider. And those with a severe learning disability will pay for the next operations.
And as I said, if you think police officers are too valuable to be wasted on making the roads safer, hire temp workers for the job. Photographs with both the driver and the license plate visible would probably do, after all they do for speeding.
And someone just said yesterday that the privacy policy of Bing is better than the one for Google.
Looks like they have the next few revisions already in mind, with substantial changes.
And there I was, thinking I was funny:
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1470306&cid=30363244
And now they're doing it.
Can we please re-introduce the death penalty for stupidity? Back in the days, before the whole "civilization" nonsense, fuckers like these wouldn't have survived long enough to demonstrate that there is a perfect vaccuum in this universe - inside their heads.
Stupid or malicious?
Yes, the privacy policy may be better. But - especially with Microsoft - what is actually happening is a whole lot more important, wouldn't you think?
Now, if history is worth anything, we know how MS plays in markets where it doesn't dominate: Nice on the outside, underhanded on the inside, and ready for the bait-and-switch as soon as they've risen to dominance.
Don't you remember the comments on this very site when the browser of the day was still Netscape and MS was struggling? How many good features and standards compatability they had over Netscape? Look where all that went once they had crushed Netscape. Look how they're slowly turning around to that approach again now that their dominance is threatened.
Make no mistake. MS only ever competes on features, quality or privacy as long as it helps them grow. There's no reason to trust them any further than you can throw the Eifeltower.
Yes, I know. But it would've ruined the punchline to insist on the differentiation. :-)
My fucking lord - you want MORE green products? Where will they go?
Uh, we're talking about patents here, dude. You know, that thing which originally was intended for ideas that nobody else has had so far?
Like any other OS, you can run Windows securely if you don't do stupid things.
Like any car, you can parallel park an 18-wheeler, if you are careful enough.
Sure, you can do it. Some OSes just make it easier, and some make it a challenge. I dare say Windos (any version) is in the later category. Heck, it usually comes with a fine selection of ad- and spyware pre-installed thanks to your friendly OEM.
'If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place.'
Strictly speaking, he's correct. If you take "anyone" to mean "nobody should ever know" in this context. As soon as you replace "anyone" with something a little closer to real-life, say "something that you don't want too many people to know", things change dramatically.
My love letters are in the "someone can know them" category - but that "someone" is well-defined, and it isn't Google.
What I do in my bedroom is something I share with at least one person anyways, and may tell to a few select others - the keyword being "select".
My medical issues are between me and my doctor.
And so on.
In every case, the strictly "if you don't want anyone to know" is true. But that "anyone" is usually one specific person.
Don't worry, they'll lobby a law against that. Problem solved. Right? RIGHT?
How about you simply refer to the other 200 discussions we've all had on the subject, instead of reading all the replies here - again?
What you're saying is untrue, and would probably cross the line into libel in many countries. Especially since you've apparently been around for a short while and know that you're spreading bullshit.
I wonder how long it would be before a bunch of lawyers make a company with a quick Firefox clone and sue EU/Microsoft for not being included in that ballot deal.
Yes, they can do that - as soon as their clone makes it into the top five list. You read the summary, you even show signs of having some understanding, as you yourself wrote "the other 4" just above this. You know that what you're saying is bonkers. So why do it? What's your goal?
it would be foolish to embark on an expensive exercise like this unless there was a 'we have more of users' data and can be profiling them better' angle.
I question your precondition that this is expensive. As I already said: If you're already operating on the scale that Google does, then adding public DNS servers is what? A thousandth of a percent of your operating cost?
EIther you believe in your principles, or you don't. If you believe in your principles except when ignoring them hurts someone you don't like, you are a hypocrite.
Then I am that, because I believe that principles are for people who find life too confusing to re-align their beliefs every now and then. Reality changes constantly. Adaptation is quite a useful thing.
The law protects everyone equally. It's not ok to steal from a bully. There is no "he needed killin'" defense (even in Texas). If it's proper to sue MS over this patent, then it's ok to sue anyone who infringes this patent.
Yes, it is. And as I said: Patent trolls are an abomination. And still I can't find myself feeling sorry for Microsoft. Because what is "proper" and what is right are sometimes different things, and not easily encoded into law. Yes, there is no "he needed killing" defense, and rightly so, because the legal system is easily gamed. But in real-life courts - and I've been to real-life courts up to the highest levels so I know a little about what I'm talking about - it exists. Judges, especially in the higher courts, do make these judgement calls and then look how the law needs to be applied to justify them.
Very cool, but of course there are questions about Google's true motivations behind knowing every site you visit.
Nonsense.
They want to cut the ISPs and other DNS providers out of their (dishonest) ad revenue streams. For a lot of competitors, this is virtually the only straw left (AOL, anyone? I know at least in Germany if they hadn't forced the marketing of the "Alice" ISP to add such a DNS-misdirect, their portal and search space would be able to count its visits in "hits per hour").
It hurts their competitors while giving Google an image plus. And the amount of overhead and traffic is neglectable if you already operate on the scale that Google does.
you actually want to cheer for Microsoft this time
Please don't tell me what I want to do. Thank you.
Some people deserve what they get, even if I wouldn't wish it on anyone else. Patent trolls are abominations, but so is Microsoft, and which of them is the worse one is strictly a judgement call.
On what little we have, we simply don't know.
But I wouldn't be very surprised if it's all true. It is a high-risk investment. It was much more likely that it would've turned up nothing at all. People regularily pay a few bucks for a slip of paper and one of them is a millionaire by the end of the week. Would you believe that? It's called the lottery.
The business model of the piracy exchange sounds a lot like that, except that they're drawing ships, not numbers. :-)
Out of curiosity, does anyone know why these ships aren't arming themselves?
Yes, many reasons were posted yesterday, on that other pirate story.
The only reason piracy is profitable is because freighters don't fight back. If all the ships worth hijacking moving through the area had a single M2 Browning, piracy would pretty much end.
Oh yeah. As we all learnt from history, back in the 16th century, piracy came to an instant stop as soon as they put a few cannons on those merchant ships. Right? Uh... wrong timeline, friend.
As long as the risk is less than the profit, the only thing that arming the freighters will accomplish is creating more dead sailors, because the pirates will very certainly shoot back. And if you kill their friends and they manage to board you anyways, the question "revenge or ransom?" may be a real tough one.
It seems that you're the idiot. For all we know, she did get her share.
And I'd be surprised if not. Criminal societies generally adhere more strongly to their codes of ethic than civil society. Because there are fewer other forces that bind them, and trust is more important.
And, of course, for the simple practical reason that if the guys want to get future investors for their next trips, they'd better build a reputation of actually paying them.
No, really. And I say that as an outspoken opponent of software patent.
His most important sentence is It is obvious that software products are not "software ideas". - and that's what's wrong with the patent system. A hundred years ago, you had to submit a working model to get a patent. These days, you can patent software ideas and business processes.
When we speak about "software patents" we are really talking about monopoly rights on algorithms. And that's as stupid an idea as a copyright on a number.
What the author apparently means when he talks about "software patents" is a complete product, a working implementation of a concept that can be demonstrated to do what the list of claims contains. That's a bit of a different animal than about 99.999% of the software patents issued during the past 10 years.
And I agree that a bit of protection on that would be nice for those who invented it. We can discuss whether or not patents is the right tool, or copyright, or some new form, but that's not important.