Course he was probably in violation of a EULA or even contract that he agreed to but didn't read, which compromises his standing.
From my understanding, most EULA disagreements that have made it into court have been deemed invalid by the courts. Of course it depends on which court you get your case into...
The forceability of an EULA depends on several factors, one of them being the court that the case is heard in. Most courts that have addressed the validity of the shrinkwrap license have found them to be invalid, characterizing them as contracts of adhesion, unconscionable, and/or unacceptable pursuant to the U.C.C. --see, for instance, Step-Saver Data Systems, Inc. v. Wyse Technology (939 F.2d 91), Vault Corp. v. Quaid Software Ltd. (at harvard.edu) and Rich, Mass Market Software and the Shrinkwrap License (23 Colo. Law 1321.17). A minority of courts have determined that the shrinkwrap license is valid and enforceable: see ProCD, Inc. v. Zeidenberg (at findlaw.com), Microsoft v. Harmony Computers (846 F. Supp. 208, 212, E.D.N.Y. 1994), Novell v. Network Trade Center (at harvard.edu), and Arizona Cartridge Remanufacturers Association Inc. v. Lexmark International Inc. may have some bearing as well.
The 7th Circuit and 8th Circuit subscribe to the "license" and "not sold" arguments, while most other circuits do not. In addition, the contracts' enforceability depends on whether the state has passed Uniform Computer Information Transactions Act (UCITA) or Anti-UCITA (UCITA Bomb Shelter) laws. In Anti-UCITA states, the Uniform Commercial Code (UCC) has been amended to either specifically define software as a good (thus making it fall under the UCC), or to disallow contracts which specify that the terms of contract are subject to the laws of a state that's passed UCITA.
Just because the EULA clearly states that you violated terms of agreement doesn't supercede any existsing laws on the book. So if they guy can get a Judge (or Jury) in a civil court to agree with him they can literally force Linden to give him the money.
Of course, he's got to prove monetary loss at the fault of Linden and that his loss has a value of $8,000. (Of course many jury's will of course over ride any common sense in the matter.)
The DS would be a better platform of MMOGs. You'd still need a Wifi connection somewhere, but to play an MMOG on the cell phone would be kind of cumbersome.
Let's face it, every 2 sided battle is geared towards "good" vs. "evil". We've been taught that time and again, in every movie, game, whatever.
That is why I like Manga, Anime, and various other Japanese media.
Mostly because good guys and bad guys aren't black and white.
I've been watching Lone Wolf and Cubs series...
Basically the main character, Ogami Itt, is the Shogun's Executor. He kills anyone at the Shogun's order even if it is small children. He isn't a bad man, but he does his duty and even has a shrine for those he kills.
He is by western standards cold and harsh and a brutal killer, but he cares for his son.
The antogonist, old Retsud and his clan, frames Ogami for a crime against the Shogun and then murders Ogami's wife. However, evil as Retsudo is, he does it for the sake of his clan and often begs those who die for his sake to forgive him for what they have to do. He also shows compasion and sadness for the children he looses in the conflict.
This often sums up most of Japanese works since nothing is black and white. To me I'd rather have that than be pandered all the time by false ideals that have no basis in reality.
Sure there are plenty of Anime movies with clear cut good and bad, but there are plenty with "good guys" not always being that good and "bad guys" not being all that bad.
It is how the real world works. There is no such thing as a "bad guy", but people who do bad things.
What? "Designer drugs" is a term used to mean "illegal drugs with certain nonessential groups substituted to circumvent existing drug laws".
Actually, the term has fallen out of favor these days since the law enforcements main drug probelm is meth these days.
However, in ten years, designer drugs will mean the drugs you go to the doctor, he pricks your finger to get your DNA, he runs it through a machine which emails the pharmacy exactly what drugs to make for your body makeup and condition, and by the time you arrive at the Drug store your prescription is made.
It is what they mean by "designer drugs" these days.
Well, to be fair, what department WOULD regulate nanotechnology?
I was hoping the "Department of Federal Whacky Unrealistic Luddite Fears of Science Fiction Movies" would get involved.
Seriously, nanotechnology doesn't need to be regulated because it really isn't a technology per say (other than marketing hype of technology that uses measurements in nano meters) and poses as much of a threat to civilization as say... Pollen.
I'm sure if you ate Nano Carbon tubes it won't be healthy for you, but so is eating lead paint, raw meat, or abestos.
Secondly, if a Gray goo scenario did happen, it would only be stoppable by Strong AI and its own nanobots. I mean, do you think that FDA regulation today will stop a North Korean/Iranian mad scientist from making gray goo nanobots in year 2045?
It is kind of like trying to regulate Martian Plasma Death ray guns.
Tivo and others may be missing something here, people watching TV do appreciate a "breather" every once in a while, and if the commercial breaks are filled with quality pseudo entertainment, people will watch it. And vendors will get market share.... Some I watch every time I see them (Caveman FedEx commercial anybody?).
I couldn't agree more. I will usually sit through Geico commericals. The Fed Ex one just got me rolling on the floor when I first saw it. Then there is the
Truth is... People don't mind commercials if they are entertaining.
It is all this useless crap that people want to block out.
As an open source advocate I am saddened to see this, as a stockholder I am quite happy.
As a fellow stock holder I am dismayed. The less open source involved... The more they have to spend money on fixing things themselves and less having people point out their mistakes for free.
Which of course less money for revenue and the less my stocks will be of value.
The piracy argument is a straw man. Most of the those people installing OS X on their Dells wouldn't have ever bought a Mac anyways.
Even then, those pirates might have become converts and bought a mac a few years down the road.
In which I would hope would help get the stock price coughs back to $86 again. *coughs*
2) Even the biggest corporations come down to a couple of guys low on the totem pole sooner or later.
I hate this excuse. No matter how big your company is. The CEO is responsible for everyone he works there actually being able to continue to work there.
Sure, the CEO doesn't have the ability to monitor every single thing in the company, but CEO can fire incompetance from the grunts, his manager, and all the way up to the VP level if these things happen.
If the grunts do these these things, then their managers are to blame for hiring them or mismanaging them.
Sorry, but the history of technological progress is littered with Really Bad Ideas that sounded really good at one time. Mad cow is just the latest, and a Google search will turn up as many as you want. Any radical idea deserves serious vetting, whether it takes the form of catcalls from the/. audience, or academic studies really isn't so important.
That said... Technology solves all problems. It may or may not introduce a new set of problems, but it sure beats living in a cave, scratching at lice, and dying of old age at 30.
You have to take some of the bad ideas with the good sometimes.
"Should every living person on the face of the earth tell the company that published this game that this is a bad idea!"
No. Ignoring and going about our lives is the better solution.
What irks me about society is that it makes problems of non-problems.
Will "Columbine The Game" make anyone go out and do a copy cat? Only if they were going to go postal anyways.
These are one of those situations where making a fuss will just get it more attention.
Secondly, everyone just needs to get over it and get on with their lives. Digg had a story a week or two ago about one of the Columnbine victims who was paralyzed giving a subjective review of the game. That is an extreme thing that happened to him and logically reviewed the game without any sensitivity of his own plight.
What did you think of it? It probably sounds a bit odd for someone like me to say, but I appreciate the fact at least to some degree that something like this was made. I think that at least it gets people talikng about Columbine in a unique perspective, which is probably a good thing. But that being said there are a lot of things that are har to play or watch. And it seems to partially glamorize what happened. It shows a stark-contrast between fantasy and real life in an interesting way.
In that case who the fuck cares, yeah you look stupid and some extra person watching tv saw it as well. So what.
I don't know. Something doesn't sit right with this model.
I think private organizations or persons could abuse the system and use information against innocent persons.
Oh... You were standing out front of a gay bar or a porn shop one day. Let's send this tape to your local church.
Or maybe that video hanging out in a Muslim neighborhood and even shaking an Iman's hand might get you tagged by right wing groups for a beating.
There is too many things I can think of that this information could be wrongly used in the hands of questionable individuals with enough resources to monitor CCTV of a persons whereabouts and actions.
"National Security" has become the new "We Do This For Our Children".
I've been thinking of a new slogan to counter the "National Security" argument.
Cowardice is unpatriotic.
Any time you do something out of fear of your safety you are now unpatriotic.
If anyone ever brings up argument that restricting freedoms and over powerful government is ok because of security concerns, just call him a coward and tell him you just labeled him "unpatriotic" for not being brave like the founding fathers or your grand pappy fighting on the beaches during WWII.
We should accept that our freedom comes at a price, and if we die by the hands of those against our open society than that is what we must accept this cost and we must brave about it.
Caving in to fear is the most "unpatriotic" thing an American can do as a citizen.
Sure, it would be a meme tactic, but I'm tired of seeing people labeled "unpatriotic" because they don't support "national security".
If any sweeping legislation does get through, who's going to enforce it? Internet police? The logical conclusion is what government does with all other regulation: licence and tax.
Well... We could just outsource our ISPs to China. We'll save time and money!
I'm trying to emulate a southern accent on slashdot. Its out of habbit when I talk about repairing computers... Makes me feel like I am repairing a car.
If they don't report it and the encrytion is broken what recourse do those people with compromised information/identities have?
A laptop theif isn't going to spend 3 months and 10,000 distributed computers to crack your laptop. Well... Maybe... If he thinks it was really critical, but chances are he might just format the drive and sell it at pawn shop.
Reorganize our entire suburban sprawl into small tightly integrated cities with housing next to workplace and markets.... Really pie in the sky would be: Cheap space flight, space elevator, asteroid mining and orbital solar power plants
That is all nice and dandy but it won't happen anytime soon, because markets (and people) hate centralization.
Solar power is probably going to take off because anyone can lower their electric bills (and get money back) by installing Solar cells on the roof of their house. However, I wouldn't look to government for anything life shaking like the Manhattan or Apollo project any time soon.
I do every now and then with spare change pay pal.
At least they are trying to build Friendly StrongAI.
And well... Strong AI would make all our other discussions a moot point and it doesn't matter if anyone in politics agrees or disagrees because it will be self-sustaining.
To the extent that the PC is modular, it fills that role better, because increasing the functionality beyond the design conception is cheaper and easier. Perhaps some people would be willing to give up the flexibility of a PC in favor of something like a game console: slicker, better at doing what it was intended to do, but limited to its designed functionality.
The reason PCs were so modular back in the day is because A.) They were expensive and sometimes you didn't need to buy everything and B.) Cheaper and easier to replace parts of the computer than the whole thing.
Remember the good old days when a 386 or 486 came with just the cpu, ram, HDD, and maybe a video card? And the thing still costed $3,000 for the base unit?
However, you could add on a modem, sound card, and CD-Rom for extra money? And those were even $500 per unit.
Also, computer parts didn't seem as reliable back then depending I still have an old IBM ps1 that is still kicking and has all its original parts but there were plenty of computer that come in our shop that the modem, video card, or cpu died and we just had to swap out just that part. It sucked when a part died and you could remove it and get a new one. Which is why I loathed integrated video and modems because they were the first to go. (Damn you Packard Bell! Damn you!)
These days... You can get a cd rom, modems, sound cards, basic video cards for $20 bucks brand new.
And they are generally reliable enough that you can just integrate them in the system without the problems of old... Heck, you can't hardly find a mother board these days without sound and network not built in.
If it breaks, you can literally throw out the whole thing and get a new one for a fraction of what it cost when you originally bought the thing a few years ago.
What we are seeing is not that modularization isn't as good as end to end, but the prices and quality of hard ware these days make a moot point.
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From my understanding, most EULA disagreements that have made it into court have been deemed invalid by the courts. Of course it depends on which court you get your case into...
Here is the wiki article on EULA Enforcability
Just because the EULA clearly states that you violated terms of agreement doesn't supercede any existsing laws on the book. So if they guy can get a Judge (or Jury) in a civil court to agree with him they can literally force Linden to give him the money.
Of course, he's got to prove monetary loss at the fault of Linden and that his loss has a value of $8,000. (Of course many jury's will of course over ride any common sense in the matter.)
The guy exploits a bug, gets his account shut out, and is expecting money?
Oh I can give you plenty of similar examples:
A CEO exploits his stock options, gets fired by the board of directors, and is expecting money?
A Jehovah's witness exploits a hole in your yard's fence to knock on your door, falls off your porch, and is expecting money?
A lady exploits her use of the cup holder, spills a McDonald's hot coffee on her lap, and is expecting money?
A group of former terrorists gets elected into power, still doesn't withdraw claims of the destruction of Israel, and is expecting money?
I could go on, but I think you can see the point. People expect money regardless of their actions.
The DS would be a better platform of MMOGs. You'd still need a Wifi connection somewhere, but to play an MMOG on the cell phone would be kind of cumbersome.
Unless of course it was turn based...
Let's face it, every 2 sided battle is geared towards "good" vs. "evil". We've been taught that time and again, in every movie, game, whatever.
That is why I like Manga, Anime, and various other Japanese media.
Mostly because good guys and bad guys aren't black and white.
I've been watching Lone Wolf and Cubs series...
Basically the main character, Ogami Itt, is the Shogun's Executor. He kills anyone at the Shogun's order even if it is small children. He isn't a bad man, but he does his duty and even has a shrine for those he kills.
He is by western standards cold and harsh and a brutal killer, but he cares for his son.
The antogonist, old Retsud and his clan, frames Ogami for a crime against the Shogun and then murders Ogami's wife. However, evil as Retsudo is, he does it for the sake of his clan and often begs those who die for his sake to forgive him for what they have to do. He also shows compasion and sadness for the children he looses in the conflict.
This often sums up most of Japanese works since nothing is black and white. To me I'd rather have that than be pandered all the time by false ideals that have no basis in reality.
Sure there are plenty of Anime movies with clear cut good and bad, but there are plenty with "good guys" not always being that good and "bad guys" not being all that bad.
It is how the real world works. There is no such thing as a "bad guy", but people who do bad things.
What? "Designer drugs" is a term used to mean "illegal drugs with certain nonessential groups substituted to circumvent existing drug laws".
Actually, the term has fallen out of favor these days since the law enforcements main drug probelm is meth these days.
However, in ten years, designer drugs will mean the drugs you go to the doctor, he pricks your finger to get your DNA, he runs it through a machine which emails the pharmacy exactly what drugs to make for your body makeup and condition, and by the time you arrive at the Drug store your prescription is made.
It is what they mean by "designer drugs" these days.
Please, you are not a stock holder.
I own enough that it pains me to not have sold at $86.
Beyond that... Saying FUD is FUD too.
Well, to be fair, what department WOULD regulate nanotechnology?
I was hoping the "Department of Federal Whacky Unrealistic Luddite Fears of Science Fiction Movies" would get involved.
Seriously, nanotechnology doesn't need to be regulated because it really isn't a technology per say (other than marketing hype of technology that uses measurements in nano meters) and poses as much of a threat to civilization as say... Pollen.
I'm sure if you ate Nano Carbon tubes it won't be healthy for you, but so is eating lead paint, raw meat, or abestos.
Secondly, if a Gray goo scenario did happen, it would only be stoppable by Strong AI and its own nanobots. I mean, do you think that FDA regulation today will stop a North Korean/Iranian mad scientist from making gray goo nanobots in year 2045?
It is kind of like trying to regulate Martian Plasma Death ray guns.
Tivo and others may be missing something here, people watching TV do appreciate a "breather" every once in a while, and if the commercial breaks are filled with quality pseudo entertainment, people will watch it. And vendors will get market share. ... Some I watch every time I see them (Caveman FedEx commercial anybody?).
I couldn't agree more. I will usually sit through Geico commericals. The Fed Ex one just got me rolling on the floor when I first saw it. Then there is the
Truth is... People don't mind commercials if they are entertaining.
It is all this useless crap that people want to block out.
As an open source advocate I am saddened to see this, as a stockholder I am quite happy.
As a fellow stock holder I am dismayed. The less open source involved... The more they have to spend money on fixing things themselves and less having people point out their mistakes for free.
Which of course less money for revenue and the less my stocks will be of value.
The piracy argument is a straw man. Most of the those people installing OS X on their Dells wouldn't have ever bought a Mac anyways.
Even then, those pirates might have become converts and bought a mac a few years down the road.
In which I would hope would help get the stock price coughs back to $86 again. *coughs*
2) Even the biggest corporations come down to a couple of guys low on the totem pole sooner or later.
I hate this excuse. No matter how big your company is. The CEO is responsible for everyone he works there actually being able to continue to work there.
Sure, the CEO doesn't have the ability to monitor every single thing in the company, but CEO can fire incompetance from the grunts, his manager, and all the way up to the VP level if these things happen.
If the grunts do these these things, then their managers are to blame for hiring them or mismanaging them.
Sorry, but the history of technological progress is littered with Really Bad Ideas that sounded really good at one time. Mad cow is just the latest, and a Google search will turn up as many as you want. Any radical idea deserves serious vetting, whether it takes the form of catcalls from the /. audience, or academic studies really isn't so important.
That said... Technology solves all problems. It may or may not introduce a new set of problems, but it sure beats living in a cave, scratching at lice, and dying of old age at 30.
You have to take some of the bad ideas with the good sometimes.
Or some other strange chip.
Maybe they use Alpha on the ships.
Last I heard they'd only use 486s. But this was in 2000.
No. Ignoring and going about our lives is the better solution.
What irks me about society is that it makes problems of non-problems.
Will "Columbine The Game" make anyone go out and do a copy cat? Only if they were going to go postal anyways.
These are one of those situations where making a fuss will just get it more attention.
Secondly, everyone just needs to get over it and get on with their lives. Digg had a story a week or two ago about one of the Columnbine victims who was paralyzed giving a subjective review of the game. That is an extreme thing that happened to him and logically reviewed the game without any sensitivity of his own plight.
From the interview:
That guy is stronger than any of us.
In that case who the fuck cares, yeah you look stupid and some extra person watching tv saw it as well. So what.
I don't know. Something doesn't sit right with this model.
I think private organizations or persons could abuse the system and use information against innocent persons.
Oh... You were standing out front of a gay bar or a porn shop one day. Let's send this tape to your local church.
Or maybe that video hanging out in a Muslim neighborhood and even shaking an Iman's hand might get you tagged by right wing groups for a beating.
There is too many things I can think of that this information could be wrongly used in the hands of questionable individuals with enough resources to monitor CCTV of a persons whereabouts and actions.
Not a big surprise for a country that doesn't respect intellectual property.
And in 50 years, they'll be at the top of the world in research, industry, and science because they didn't.
At least we'll have our lawyers.
"National Security" has become the new "We Do This For Our Children".
I've been thinking of a new slogan to counter the "National Security" argument.
Cowardice is unpatriotic.
Any time you do something out of fear of your safety you are now unpatriotic.
If anyone ever brings up argument that restricting freedoms and over powerful government is ok because of security concerns, just call him a coward and tell him you just labeled him "unpatriotic" for not being brave like the founding fathers or your grand pappy fighting on the beaches during WWII.
We should accept that our freedom comes at a price, and if we die by the hands of those against our open society than that is what we must accept this cost and we must brave about it.
Caving in to fear is the most "unpatriotic" thing an American can do as a citizen.
Sure, it would be a meme tactic, but I'm tired of seeing people labeled "unpatriotic" because they don't support "national security".
Yet, they are us, and we elected them.
Are you so sure?
"There is no perpetual motion energy source."
No, but if the fuel source will last you 100,000 years then it is a moot point.
If any sweeping legislation does get through, who's going to enforce it? Internet police? The logical conclusion is what government does with all other regulation: licence and tax.
Well... We could just outsource our ISPs to China. We'll save time and money!
For the most part, there are no "strangers in the bushes" to worry about
Well... What about Brian Peppers?
I'm trying to emulate a southern accent on slashdot. Its out of habbit when I talk about repairing computers... Makes me feel like I am repairing a car.
If they don't report it and the encrytion is broken what recourse do those people with compromised information/identities have?
A laptop theif isn't going to spend 3 months and 10,000 distributed computers to crack your laptop. Well... Maybe... If he thinks it was really critical, but chances are he might just format the drive and sell it at pawn shop.
Reorganize our entire suburban sprawl into small tightly integrated cities with housing next to workplace and markets.... Really pie in the sky would be:
Cheap space flight, space elevator, asteroid mining and orbital solar power plants
That is all nice and dandy but it won't happen anytime soon, because markets (and people) hate centralization.
Solar power is probably going to take off because anyone can lower their electric bills (and get money back) by installing Solar cells on the roof of their house. However, I wouldn't look to government for anything life shaking like the Manhattan or Apollo project any time soon.
Really want change in the world?
Donate to the Singularity Institute.
I do every now and then with spare change pay pal.
At least they are trying to build Friendly StrongAI.
And well... Strong AI would make all our other discussions a moot point and it doesn't matter if anyone in politics agrees or disagrees because it will be self-sustaining.
Advancement in decentralization is key.
Mohammed Saeed al Sahaf?
To the extent that the PC is modular, it fills that role better, because increasing the functionality beyond the design conception is cheaper and easier. Perhaps some people would be willing to give up the flexibility of a PC in favor of something like a game console: slicker, better at doing what it was intended to do, but limited to its designed functionality.
The reason PCs were so modular back in the day is because A.) They were expensive and sometimes you didn't need to buy everything and B.) Cheaper and easier to replace parts of the computer than the whole thing.
Remember the good old days when a 386 or 486 came with just the cpu, ram, HDD, and maybe a video card? And the thing still costed $3,000 for the base unit?
However, you could add on a modem, sound card, and CD-Rom for extra money? And those were even $500 per unit.
Also, computer parts didn't seem as reliable back then depending I still have an old IBM ps1 that is still kicking and has all its original parts but there were plenty of computer that come in our shop that the modem, video card, or cpu died and we just had to swap out just that part. It sucked when a part died and you could remove it and get a new one. Which is why I loathed integrated video and modems because they were the first to go. (Damn you Packard Bell! Damn you!)
These days... You can get a cd rom, modems, sound cards, basic video cards for $20 bucks brand new.
And they are generally reliable enough that you can just integrate them in the system without the problems of old... Heck, you can't hardly find a mother board these days without sound and network not built in.
If it breaks, you can literally throw out the whole thing and get a new one for a fraction of what it cost when you originally bought the thing a few years ago.
What we are seeing is not that modularization isn't as good as end to end, but the prices and quality of hard ware these days make a moot point.