Google may now be a bad guy. This dosn't exclude Microsoft from (still) being a bad guy as well. There may be no actual good guys left given the evil tendencies even some of the big Linux distros are showing...
The real reason as usual is money... This is the same group of companies that directly or indirectly runs 90% of PPV and PPN (mostly very soft) porn channels on TV in the UK (on their satellite platform as well as the "competing" cable and terrestrial TV channels). Their revenue has dropped so much due to the internet making better quality free and pay porn available that they are willing to do all sorts to try and prop up a failing business model.
IANAL but given my understanding of DMCA provisions:
Most likely the chain of events is actually... 1) Activision file DMCA with Steam 2) Steam take game down 3) TREK Industries file counter claim with Steam 4) Steam under DMCA rules have done their part with the initial takedown and respect the counter claim and restore content.
Next step is Activision have to file full court proceedings which will take a little time. Of course TREK have set themselves up for full on collapse if their counter claim is proven to be invalid or fraudulent but given the junk status their game already had I suspect its a cut and run situation for them. That is if Activision feel that the additional legal costs are worthwhile.
TBH the Orion studio don't seem to value their game much...
Normal price: £0.79 Sale discount: 51% Current price: £0.39
If a game is only worth 39p and has predominantly negative reviews this is noting more than attention grabbing in a vein hope for a few more sales before they totally abandon it.
Ignore the textures which are mostly from the Unreal Engine base assets on the Orion guns. The Orion guns are made up of the same base components as the Activation guns but mixed/matched and are vertex for vertex copies. For instance Barrel from A and stock and sight from B. There are plenty of better comparisons with screenshot examples on the Steam blog/article's comments.
Not in all cases. For instance if your credit card company/bank determine that you were at fault (ie. you willingly gave your card and details to the fraudsters and you could have determined that they were fraudulent with some checks) or fail to notify them soon enough of you being aware and if they can't recover the money for whatever reason they can still hold you liable for it. Also small transaction amounts are often not covered depending on the situation.
While the credit card companies do have more rules than paypal themselves they still have a lot of leeway to take your money.
This... and if they went after the guy for making false clams, or convinced the authorities to go after him for Fraud then they would be redeemed. All they really did was block what should be classed as a criminal act of Fraud and reading the info online, paypal rejecting his refund request wasn't that big of a deal for him. For a $50k attempted fraud he should be going to jail. If he had tried something similar at an actual bank he would be.
Payment reversals are a big deal for Twitch streamers, not only do they lose the money involved, after its likely been spent, they usually still incur paypal fees for both the initial payment and for the reversal, and are left, sometimes significantly, out of pocket.
Nope the bank has to be able to show that the money it accepted was from a legitimate source. It can give away all the money it wants but has to be able to show it obtained it from a legal source and that it was its money to give away (and not a customers).
All money laundering rules require is that you can trace the source of money and usually only require cursory checks unless significant money is involved. In the case of the hypothetical bank the fact you got the money you were at the bank and they were giving out money would be sufficient proof. You might be getting confused with bribery laws that state you can't give cash etc for favours and even then only specific situations.
Anyway companies give out money all the time... They frequently give money in lieu of failures in their procedures and/or other customer dissatisfaction. Also many companies give out stuff and cash as part of various types of competitions, for marketing reasons but basicly because they can and that's before we even get into sports and charitable sponsorships and donations.
oops that should be 70Mb/s to the states and 140 Mb/s across Europe... I blame my crappy phone touch keyboard and autocorrect for caps issues:)
But i've got FTTC Cable and there is way more capacity there if my ISP felt they could/should offer it...
My ISP offers upto 200Mb/s (and are rumoured to be beta testing 350Mb/s) but I don't see the point as I'm already past the point where it makes much noticeable difference for anything...
Their claim that they are giving CDN representative speeds but they aren't doing this properly.
It gives me what my typical US>UK transfer rate is (70MBs) for most speedtest nodes in the USA so I'm guessing that's where their server is testing from. However my typical speed across most of Europe will get near to my ISP rated speed of 140MBs with speedtest and I have seen game downloads etc actually hit this speed so this is only telling me what my speed to the US is and not what my *actual* speed to most CDNs is.
And the award for best flamebait post right there.
I'd argue differently. Customers are money, happy tipping customers even more money. If you piss of your customers because you excessively fine them (or even just act annoyed) for a few additional minutes waiting (which will likely be insignificant compared to traffic delays anyway) you have no customers and therefore no money, and lots and lots of time. That and the journey cost should have some padding already built in for that wait time, trying to screw even more money out of your customers is just greed.
Even if you say the driver should be getting paid for those minutes, taking the current US median taxi driver wage of around $16 per hour (source http://www1.salary.com/Taxi-Dr... ) (which is likely more than an uber drivers average hourly wage) that extra 5 minutes at most should be $1.33. Charging $5-$10 is excessive.
GPS on mobiles is *NOT* that accurate in built up areas (10s of meters is common) with restricted view of the sky and don't work at all if the driver/user is in a covered parking lot/pick up area or similar. The phone/app often falls back to alternatives such as cell tower and wifi location methods which are usually only accurate to 10s if not 100s of meters.
2 minutes is not sufficient leeway given a $5-10 fee - it is not a very long time at all.
Any large building with lifts etc can have exit times easily unpredictably vary by 5 minutes depending purely on the positions and traffic in the lifts - especially if you are visiting (normally a usual reason for using taxi or taxi like services). Exiting a bar/restaurant etc can easily be delayed by 2 minutes either due to the staff being slow handling things or some other customer just getting in the way. If you don't book in advance you can easily end up waiting 10 to 20 minutes for the driver which makes this unfair at best, and unsafe for the user at worst. Entertainments etc overrun. Should you really be penalised so harshly just because the show you went to overran by 12 minutes when you only allowed yourself 10 to exit the building after the posted finish time?
The fact is the drivers are ultimately providing the service to the riders. If they feel that 2 minutes waiting (with no real cost other than their time) for the customer in what is basically a customer-centric service job is too much then they should possibly look for a different income stream.
"this product does not contain GMOs" is a misleading a marketing claim just like "organic food is pesticide free"*.
The fact being that every crop has had some kind of genetic modification by humans. At one end you have selective breeding techniques, sometimes with 1000s of iterations giving a crop that is not even close to the starting plant and would not survive in the wild without various farming techniques such as fertilising (both "organic" and chemical) and watering. Then you have things like hybrids where two different strains (and even sometimes plants) are cross-bread producing a third (usually sterile) variety. Then you have the chemical modifications that have been in use for years such as the process that genetically modifies water melon (and other plants) seeds before planting that makes them a seedless variety. Most of these are genetic modifications that would not normally happen in nature (or if they do, would only happen rarely, not to the same extreme, and have no impact as they are not viable).
(* Organic farmers use pesticides produced using "natural processes" as opposed to being chemically synthesised, which is in itself a very fine line as their production is still usually a chemical process, just the source of the chemicals or where the process is preformed differs. Some "organic" pesticides and their by-products are more toxic and harmful to humans and the general environment than their non-organic equivalents)
No it was likely a link to the Washington Post or Fox News or some similar place and you mistook their reporting style for Swahili... either that or it was the advertising on the site getting in the way again...
Slashdot Mirror
Google may now be a bad guy. This dosn't exclude Microsoft from (still) being a bad guy as well. There may be no actual good guys left given the evil tendencies even some of the big Linux distros are showing...
The real reason as usual is money... This is the same group of companies that directly or indirectly runs 90% of PPV and PPN (mostly very soft) porn channels on TV in the UK (on their satellite platform as well as the "competing" cable and terrestrial TV channels). Their revenue has dropped so much due to the internet making better quality free and pay porn available that they are willing to do all sorts to try and prop up a failing business model.
IANAL but given my understanding of DMCA provisions:
Most likely the chain of events is actually...
1) Activision file DMCA with Steam
2) Steam take game down
3) TREK Industries file counter claim with Steam
4) Steam under DMCA rules have done their part with the initial takedown and respect the counter claim and restore content.
Next step is Activision have to file full court proceedings which will take a little time. Of course TREK have set themselves up for full on collapse if their counter claim is proven to be invalid or fraudulent but given the junk status their game already had I suspect its a cut and run situation for them. That is if Activision feel that the additional legal costs are worthwhile.
TBH the Orion studio don't seem to value their game much...
Normal price: £0.79
Sale discount: 51%
Current price: £0.39
If a game is only worth 39p and has predominantly negative reviews this is noting more than attention grabbing in a vein hope for a few more sales before they totally abandon it.
Ignore the textures which are mostly from the Unreal Engine base assets on the Orion guns.
The Orion guns are made up of the same base components as the Activation guns but mixed/matched and are vertex for vertex copies. For instance Barrel from A and stock and sight from B. There are plenty of better comparisons with screenshot examples on the Steam blog/article's comments.
Wait. didn't this guy just officially tell the courts he was breaking the law gambling illegally? Why isn't he in jail already?
oops not sure what happened to half my text there... should have had "the fault of the robot owner/operator/maintainer" in there :)
this has already been decided in law.
Is an injury sustained by someone by an industrial robot with insufficient safety around it so the victim could end up in danger? yes.
exactly... this is nothing more than a very elaborate bear trap. Not a true AI acting on its own
In the UK PPV advertise XXX but the best you get is xxx
Not in all cases. For instance if your credit card company/bank determine that you were at fault (ie. you willingly gave your card and details to the fraudsters and you could have determined that they were fraudulent with some checks) or fail to notify them soon enough of you being aware and if they can't recover the money for whatever reason they can still hold you liable for it. Also small transaction amounts are often not covered depending on the situation.
While the credit card companies do have more rules than paypal themselves they still have a lot of leeway to take your money.
This... and if they went after the guy for making false clams, or convinced the authorities to go after him for Fraud then they would be redeemed. All they really did was block what should be classed as a criminal act of Fraud and reading the info online, paypal rejecting his refund request wasn't that big of a deal for him. For a $50k attempted fraud he should be going to jail. If he had tried something similar at an actual bank he would be.
Payment reversals are a big deal for Twitch streamers, not only do they lose the money involved, after its likely been spent, they usually still incur paypal fees for both the initial payment and for the reversal, and are left, sometimes significantly, out of pocket.
(not a streamer but frequent Twitch watcher)
Nope the bank has to be able to show that the money it accepted was from a legitimate source. It can give away all the money it wants but has to be able to show it obtained it from a legal source and that it was its money to give away (and not a customers).
Wrong.
All money laundering rules require is that you can trace the source of money and usually only require cursory checks unless significant money is involved. In the case of the hypothetical bank the fact you got the money you were at the bank and they were giving out money would be sufficient proof. You might be getting confused with bribery laws that state you can't give cash etc for favours and even then only specific situations.
Anyway companies give out money all the time... They frequently give money in lieu of failures in their procedures and/or other customer dissatisfaction. Also many companies give out stuff and cash as part of various types of competitions, for marketing reasons but basicly because they can and that's before we even get into sports and charitable sponsorships and donations.
oops that should be 70Mb/s to the states and 140 Mb/s across Europe... I blame my crappy phone touch keyboard and autocorrect for caps issues :)
But i've got FTTC Cable and there is way more capacity there if my ISP felt they could/should offer it...
My ISP offers upto 200Mb/s (and are rumoured to be beta testing 350Mb/s) but I don't see the point as I'm already past the point where it makes much noticeable difference for anything...
Their claim that they are giving CDN representative speeds but they aren't doing this properly.
It gives me what my typical US>UK transfer rate is (70MBs) for most speedtest nodes in the USA so I'm guessing that's where their server is testing from.
However my typical speed across most of Europe will get near to my ISP rated speed of 140MBs with speedtest and I have seen game downloads etc actually hit this speed so this is only telling me what my speed to the US is and not what my *actual* speed to most CDNs is.
And the award for best flamebait post right there.
I'd argue differently. Customers are money, happy tipping customers even more money. If you piss of your customers because you excessively fine them (or even just act annoyed) for a few additional minutes waiting (which will likely be insignificant compared to traffic delays anyway) you have no customers and therefore no money, and lots and lots of time. That and the journey cost should have some padding already built in for that wait time, trying to screw even more money out of your customers is just greed.
Even if you say the driver should be getting paid for those minutes, taking the current US median taxi driver wage of around $16 per hour (source http://www1.salary.com/Taxi-Dr... ) (which is likely more than an uber drivers average hourly wage) that extra 5 minutes at most should be $1.33. Charging $5-$10 is excessive.
GPS on mobiles is *NOT* that accurate in built up areas (10s of meters is common) with restricted view of the sky and don't work at all if the driver/user is in a covered parking lot/pick up area or similar. The phone/app often falls back to alternatives such as cell tower and wifi location methods which are usually only accurate to 10s if not 100s of meters.
2 minutes is not sufficient leeway given a $5-10 fee - it is not a very long time at all.
Any large building with lifts etc can have exit times easily unpredictably vary by 5 minutes depending purely on the positions and traffic in the lifts - especially if you are visiting (normally a usual reason for using taxi or taxi like services).
Exiting a bar/restaurant etc can easily be delayed by 2 minutes either due to the staff being slow handling things or some other customer just getting in the way.
If you don't book in advance you can easily end up waiting 10 to 20 minutes for the driver which makes this unfair at best, and unsafe for the user at worst.
Entertainments etc overrun. Should you really be penalised so harshly just because the show you went to overran by 12 minutes when you only allowed yourself 10 to exit the building after the posted finish time?
The fact is the drivers are ultimately providing the service to the riders. If they feel that 2 minutes waiting (with no real cost other than their time) for the customer in what is basically a customer-centric service job is too much then they should possibly look for a different income stream.
sub Simulate()
call DoStuff
call Simulate
end sub
Actually forget that... it's a ghost and part of the marketing campaign for the Ghostbusters reboot...
*checks offshore account*
what no payment? dam... maybe that was the actual truth :(
It could also just be a Soviet spy (or for that matter CIA) sat that got carelessly too close to the ISS...
*checks bitcoin wallet*
Yup! Absolutely was a spy sat
Clowns and mimes are free to take health care advice from whoever they want either way.
"this product does not contain GMOs" is a misleading a marketing claim just like "organic food is pesticide free"*.
The fact being that every crop has had some kind of genetic modification by humans. At one end you have selective breeding techniques, sometimes with 1000s of iterations giving a crop that is not even close to the starting plant and would not survive in the wild without various farming techniques such as fertilising (both "organic" and chemical) and watering. Then you have things like hybrids where two different strains (and even sometimes plants) are cross-bread producing a third (usually sterile) variety. Then you have the chemical modifications that have been in use for years such as the process that genetically modifies water melon (and other plants) seeds before planting that makes them a seedless variety. Most of these are genetic modifications that would not normally happen in nature (or if they do, would only happen rarely, not to the same extreme, and have no impact as they are not viable).
(* Organic farmers use pesticides produced using "natural processes" as opposed to being chemically synthesised, which is in itself a very fine line as their production is still usually a chemical process, just the source of the chemicals or where the process is preformed differs. Some "organic" pesticides and their by-products are more toxic and harmful to humans and the general environment than their non-organic equivalents)
No it was likely a link to the Washington Post or Fox News or some similar place and you mistook their reporting style for Swahili... either that or it was the advertising on the site getting in the way again...