Pepsi won't do any "caps instantly win" things anymore. Ever since the iTunes codes, where people figured out that if you tilt the Pepsi bottle at the right angle, you can tell without a shadow of a doubt which ones were winners and which ones were losers, everything will be done with codes you enter online for a menial amount of points, or nothing at all.
...they just can't put the Dell logo on the website.
If you ever see "Mystery brand Speakers" on Woot sometimes, they're actually Dell speakers. There's just some law/rule/corporate BS preventing them from actually putting the name up there. They can do everything short of that; even in the description, it says "Dude, you're getting speakers!"
So Dell's been doing this for at least a year.
People SHOULD be able to get away with stuff like this without criminal charges.
It's a sad country when two kids get into a fight, one says "I'm gonna kill you!" in the heat of the fight, and that kid gets expelled, where the other gets a 5-day suspension (or nothing at all, and then sues the other kid he was fighting.) It's sad when every single thing that can be tried as possible terrorism is tried as terrorism.
I'm going to go to the other side of the extreme here. It shouldn't be illegal unless the terrorist act is actually committed. "Attempted" crimes PERIOD are bullshit. Attempted murder, attempted burglary, etc, etc. Don't charge 'em unless they actuall get in and the person's dead or the stuff's stolen.
Fwak Google, Fwak F/OSS, Fwak Linux, etc, etc. Would you rather make $4,500 over 4 months, or start something that would make you $4,500,000,000?
Enough said.
But with the way the REAL world works, one will eventually buy out the other, prices shoot way up, and 99.9% of people accept it, pay the higher price (like with Microsoft), and move on. The outspoken 0.1% just post on Slashdot.
Oh, and slip in someone's REAL credit card. So the people actually watching the commercial get a name and a CC# to use.
Actually, like the EULA that hid a $1,000 prize in it so long ago, if someone made a seemingly-normal credit card commercial that had a prize-winning CC name and number, and part of the fine print said the first person to "identity theft" the credit card in the commercial wins $50,000 or something, we might see a lot more interest in commercials.
I'd mod this up if I had the points. So many "use Linux", "use Firefox", "love open source" trolls to mod down too...I don't think even 30 points would be enough.
If Microsoft had its way without such things as anti-trust laws, a user with a pirated copy of Windows could post proof that they've killed a Macintosh or Linux user, which would substitute as payment to validate their copy of Windows.
Bullies need to be hit where it hurts -- the wallet. Parents of bullies don't care what they do to other kids now...maybe they will start when they just had to pay out $100k for their kid's latest incident at high school.
I wish Microsoft COULD (and then WOULD) buy all rights to current OS projects or bribe enough people to get laws passed banning OS in its entirety.
No, I'm not kidding. This isn't an add-on to the April Fools joke.
I make about $15,000-$20,000 a year by moving bulk Yu-Gi-Oh cards on eBay. You don't want him to play a game you can use to make a mass profit because...?
Replace "a secret admiration for Jar Jar Binks" with "the belief that Microsoft should rule the world" and THEN you'll have something worthy of a movie.
Any professor who does "practicals" instead of "tests"...do they really need to be a professor?
At my school, I only ran into one teacher who ever used that term in describing an exam. The teacher was noted for being ridiculously difficult in comparison to any other teacher in the course. The drop rate from her class was fairly high. Her reputation included words and phrases like "Unhelpful" and "take anyone but her if seeking a Gen Ed."
We shouldn't be watching people play the newest FPS or whatever piece of crap Microsoft churns out next. If I want to watch someone play games on a grand scale, I want to be watching them play CLASSIC games. The games that actually matter. Super Mario Kart. Tetris. Dr. Mario.
That might draw in all the people who played games back in the 80's and hasn't done so since, as they'd actually recognize the games and get interested.
Are those actual billions, or are those RIAA-inflated numbers, where it actually only cost $10 million to fix it all but they want to say it's $2 billion so they can sue for that much?
Okay...so you leave them alone for 20 minutes...they pull out their net-connected cell phone, Google a page about what you asked them to write, and cheat their way through that too.
From someone who did a fair bit of cheating in high school and a little bit in college, unless a person is determined to absolutely, positively make sure you don't cheat and dedicates a large part of their time to it, people will still find a way to cheat.
How else could we buy the $500 gaming rig without pirating XP first? http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/10/29/174823 3
But seriously, IMO, if they make the software impossible to make a crack for, then they deserve their money. If it can be cracked, they don't.
Why isn't there a clause in BitTorrent saying that if you deliberately upload fake/poisoned material, you are in violation of its terms of service and now must pay $50,000 or something?
The RIAA can get away with ridiculous fines for software piracy, can't the P2P program owners levy ridiculous fines against people trying to prevent piracy?
This software is one of the many reasons in which a kid who feels they should be immune to their parent's rules should immediately get a keylogger onto the computer.
I'm 21 now...but when I was 15-16, my mother tried to control how long I was online due to my involvement with porn/roleplaying. When I was actually having trouble getting online through more conventional means (signing on with my dad's account because he never changes his password, using a free trial of another ISP), the first thing I did was get a free keylogger and got my mother's password.
Yes, she eventually found out, but basically once she realized that these keyloggers could help her find out whether or not my dad was using the computer to try and fool around with other women (and he was), she eventually sided with me and we agreed to set up the keylogger so we could both use it, never look at the each other's stuff, and focus on the great of the two evils -- my dad.
Basically, now that I'm in a position to do so, whenever I hear of a kid stuck behind a content filter, parental control, or anything of the sort, I ALWAYS try to help them get around it -- first by offering them a copy of my keylogger and then by going through other ways they can get around the filters normally (with AOL, opening an external IE/FF window, etc.)
If I was under 16 now, and my parents were trying to keep me from playing violent games...backup all my data, intentionally botch the system to the point it needs a full format/reinstall, their data's gone, mine's still here, and "the last thing that happened was you installing that parental block software, maybe the problem's with that?" gg, I win.
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And at what point are you going to have the seller be HONEST about the item being shipped?
Just have them mark it as damaged and worth $50 or something so you don't get hit with import tax.
Pepsi won't do any "caps instantly win" things anymore. Ever since the iTunes codes, where people figured out that if you tilt the Pepsi bottle at the right angle, you can tell without a shadow of a doubt which ones were winners and which ones were losers, everything will be done with codes you enter online for a menial amount of points, or nothing at all.
...they just can't put the Dell logo on the website. If you ever see "Mystery brand Speakers" on Woot sometimes, they're actually Dell speakers. There's just some law/rule/corporate BS preventing them from actually putting the name up there. They can do everything short of that; even in the description, it says "Dude, you're getting speakers!" So Dell's been doing this for at least a year.
WOW. This is insane.
People SHOULD be able to get away with stuff like this without criminal charges.
It's a sad country when two kids get into a fight, one says "I'm gonna kill you!" in the heat of the fight, and that kid gets expelled, where the other gets a 5-day suspension (or nothing at all, and then sues the other kid he was fighting.) It's sad when every single thing that can be tried as possible terrorism is tried as terrorism.
I'm going to go to the other side of the extreme here. It shouldn't be illegal unless the terrorist act is actually committed. "Attempted" crimes PERIOD are bullshit. Attempted murder, attempted burglary, etc, etc. Don't charge 'em unless they actuall get in and the person's dead or the stuff's stolen.
Fwak Google, Fwak F/OSS, Fwak Linux, etc, etc. Would you rather make $4,500 over 4 months, or start something that would make you $4,500,000,000? Enough said.
I think this is all you really needed to say there.
But with the way the REAL world works, one will eventually buy out the other, prices shoot way up, and 99.9% of people accept it, pay the higher price (like with Microsoft), and move on. The outspoken 0.1% just post on Slashdot.
Oh, and slip in someone's REAL credit card. So the people actually watching the commercial get a name and a CC# to use.
Actually, like the EULA that hid a $1,000 prize in it so long ago, if someone made a seemingly-normal credit card commercial that had a prize-winning CC name and number, and part of the fine print said the first person to "identity theft" the credit card in the commercial wins $50,000 or something, we might see a lot more interest in commercials.
I'd mod this up if I had the points. So many "use Linux", "use Firefox", "love open source" trolls to mod down too...I don't think even 30 points would be enough.
If Microsoft had its way without such things as anti-trust laws, a user with a pirated copy of Windows could post proof that they've killed a Macintosh or Linux user, which would substitute as payment to validate their copy of Windows.
Bullies need to be hit where it hurts -- the wallet. Parents of bullies don't care what they do to other kids now...maybe they will start when they just had to pay out $100k for their kid's latest incident at high school.
I wish Microsoft COULD (and then WOULD) buy all rights to current OS projects or bribe enough people to get laws passed banning OS in its entirety. No, I'm not kidding. This isn't an add-on to the April Fools joke.
I make about $15,000-$20,000 a year by moving bulk Yu-Gi-Oh cards on eBay. You don't want him to play a game you can use to make a mass profit because...?
Replace "a secret admiration for Jar Jar Binks" with "the belief that Microsoft should rule the world" and THEN you'll have something worthy of a movie.
At my school, I only ran into one teacher who ever used that term in describing an exam. The teacher was noted for being ridiculously difficult in comparison to any other teacher in the course. The drop rate from her class was fairly high. Her reputation included words and phrases like "Unhelpful" and "take anyone but her if seeking a Gen Ed."
And then you have the situation with students going in and changing grades of OTHER students, particularly ones they don't like...
We shouldn't be watching people play the newest FPS or whatever piece of crap Microsoft churns out next. If I want to watch someone play games on a grand scale, I want to be watching them play CLASSIC games. The games that actually matter. Super Mario Kart. Tetris. Dr. Mario. That might draw in all the people who played games back in the 80's and hasn't done so since, as they'd actually recognize the games and get interested.
Are those actual billions, or are those RIAA-inflated numbers, where it actually only cost $10 million to fix it all but they want to say it's $2 billion so they can sue for that much?
Okay...so you leave them alone for 20 minutes...they pull out their net-connected cell phone, Google a page about what you asked them to write, and cheat their way through that too. From someone who did a fair bit of cheating in high school and a little bit in college, unless a person is determined to absolutely, positively make sure you don't cheat and dedicates a large part of their time to it, people will still find a way to cheat.
I mean, seriously...how many stories has Slashdot lifted from other tech sites?
There's a way to kill Sony Execs without actually invoking Texas law and still able to get away with it. $sys$KillSonyExecs It's just that simple!
How else could we buy the $500 gaming rig without pirating XP first? http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/10/29/174823 3
But seriously, IMO, if they make the software impossible to make a crack for, then they deserve their money. If it can be cracked, they don't.
Why isn't there a clause in BitTorrent saying that if you deliberately upload fake/poisoned material, you are in violation of its terms of service and now must pay $50,000 or something? The RIAA can get away with ridiculous fines for software piracy, can't the P2P program owners levy ridiculous fines against people trying to prevent piracy?
It makes sense that those from India are superb programmers and won this contest -- so many of our IT jobs are being outsourced over there.
This software is one of the many reasons in which a kid who feels they should be immune to their parent's rules should immediately get a keylogger onto the computer. I'm 21 now...but when I was 15-16, my mother tried to control how long I was online due to my involvement with porn/roleplaying. When I was actually having trouble getting online through more conventional means (signing on with my dad's account because he never changes his password, using a free trial of another ISP), the first thing I did was get a free keylogger and got my mother's password. Yes, she eventually found out, but basically once she realized that these keyloggers could help her find out whether or not my dad was using the computer to try and fool around with other women (and he was), she eventually sided with me and we agreed to set up the keylogger so we could both use it, never look at the each other's stuff, and focus on the great of the two evils -- my dad. Basically, now that I'm in a position to do so, whenever I hear of a kid stuck behind a content filter, parental control, or anything of the sort, I ALWAYS try to help them get around it -- first by offering them a copy of my keylogger and then by going through other ways they can get around the filters normally (with AOL, opening an external IE/FF window, etc.) If I was under 16 now, and my parents were trying to keep me from playing violent games...backup all my data, intentionally botch the system to the point it needs a full format/reinstall, their data's gone, mine's still here, and "the last thing that happened was you installing that parental block software, maybe the problem's with that?" gg, I win.