I think EU plays dangerous game, what if MS decides to make a show out of it and closes, effective immediately, all MS products sale and support in EU? It will cost billions to EU economy to switch to alternatives, educate customers and fix alternatives to the point of being usable by average user.
Complying with EU's decision will have a lot more effect on MS than just EU market, the will get more direct competition everywhere and that not what they would want.
For example they missed Electronic Arts vs. Ultima Online smurfs lawsuit. Whole reason we don't get NA volunteers for mmorpgs nowadays. How about case where Sony get suied over suicide of some EQ catass?
This article is incomplete to the point of being misleading. It misses whole point of PC games. I played my first game on PC, it was huge IBM with reels and game I played was Space Invaders.
I a year 2016 you will go to jail for singing lyrics of a copyrighted song in the shower, extra jail time will be added if you botched it badly or got some parts of it wrong.
Actual speed limit is very dependent on condition and type of the car you drive. Better cars can drive faster a lot faster a lot safer. Someone driving brand spanking new sports car with tuned suspension, stability and traction control is a lot less likely to go off the road then someone driving old and poorly maintained economy car with worn shocks and tired springs. Car and road familiarity also play important role, as well as you car's ability to navigate less-than-perfect road conditions.
For example RWD car with 60/40 weight distribution can take corner a lot faster than FWD with 70/30, that doesn't come into play at 'normal' driving speeds under normal road conditions but it might if road is wet. At the same time RWD is more likely to fishtail on slippery road under acceleration.
I don't watch TV, adds waste too much of my time while doing it. Instead I purchase and/or download good shows and movies. I also go to movie theatres a lot (and make point of being late to avoid adds). I heavily rely on alternative entertainment - local theatre, jazz and alternative music bars, message boards, and computer games. I'm zealous about my host file, browser and security permissions choices - blocking most advertisers. I don't have flash installed on my home machine to avoid annoying flash adds. I go out of my way to boycott companies with intrusive advertisements that I do get to see (billboards, movie product placement, newspapers).
As I said I hate adds with passion and see them as stealing my money by wasting my time. I don't understand why society as a whole tolerates them and even pays for them. Costs of wasted time due to adds is huge yet everyone doesn't seem to mind.
But if I'm not a terrorist/ communist/ homosexual/ deviant/ Muslim/ unemployed.... It always boggles my mind how easily people are willing to discard freedoms just because it doesn't affect them. I bet if they took away your 'freedom' to read slashdot you would be all at arms.
>>your email address, your mobile phone number, names of your traveling companions, your name, your address, and your emergency contacts name, address, and phone number.
I'd fill that form with something along the lines billgates@microsoft.com, 202-456-1414, traveling with E. Presley and R. Nixon, My Name, 221B Baker Street, 911...
Information they are asking is outrageous, is there any way they can force you to submit it?
>> I'm pretty sure that a six-stage nuclear device capable of a multi-gigaton blast is a serious threat to anything and everything.
Given we get to go to war with somebody that can reach us, given that we find where they come from... How are we going to get that 'six-stage nuclear device' to where it deals any damage? From where I we ether let hostal alliens kill us or help them kill us by nuking them ON OUR OWN planet.
Is it a good thing "to organize the world's information " ?
It seems I'm one of the few people not excited about this idea. I fear that in the future privacy will be luxury item that very few can afford.
One SF novel I read introduced me to very interesting idea - if everything networked and you can access virtually any kind of information about the only reliable way to have privacy is to drown it in a see of misinformation and irrelevant information. Anything distinctive about you becomes a disadvantage - you can be identified by it and tracked down. So everyone will want to conform and be a Bill Smith from a large city working for large company...
A lot of information out there gets recorded about every individual person - shopping habits, library books, income, medical history, debt, family, education, political affiliations, phone calls history, traffic violations... Only right now most of this information is unorganized and not readily networked, so you can't come up with inexpensive and fast way to retrieve it. On other hand if Google achieves its goal...
You think monopolizing OS is bad? How about monopolizing access to information? How about monopolizing not letting others acces your private information? It just might happen.
Game violence is something most of us grew up here and we are fine, right? Well its right and wrong at the same time. Since we were kids computer games gained whole lot of realism and detail. Its one thing to 'kill' pixilated nazis that cannot be mistaken for human beings because they don't look that real and another thing to... well nothing right now but we are getting there. IMO in our lifetime we will see movie-realistic graphics and perhaps some emersion-3D technology that would make any games very close to reality. I don't think we have real problem right now with computer game violence, after all games do not feel real that reasonable person, or even typical kid, will mistake it for reality.
>> You can't sue the maker of a legitimate product just because the person using said product has an addictive personality.
You can sue maker of a known addictive product for failing to provide adequate warning and selling it to minors. WoW is *designed* to be addictive, most of the game is straight out of Reinforcement Schedules/Conditioning psychology textbook.
I don't see how this will fly for two reasons.
First reason is that typical users hate intrusive adds and will even pay others money to clean up computers to stop this annoyance. Now they propose that these adds will come as supposedly unblockable part of the system? How intrusive are we talking about?
Second reason is privacy concerns, for effective advertising it has to be targeted and for targeted adds they need to collect or access some private information. I personally have big problem with my OS collecting and sending information about my browsing, shopping habits and personal information. Considering how secure Win is there is no guarantee that information it collected is going to be secure. There is also no guarantee that even if information stays secure its not going to be abused by MS.
WoW proves that innovation does not pay in MMORPGs. We are all doomed to vicious ding/grats treadmil quest for the next shiny for a long while. On a positive note, when we die and go to hell it will feel just like good old catass times, you just won't have to sock it unless they make you to.
Bigger problem lies with the fact that WoW got to the point where they no longer need to concern themselves with being reasonable or even polite. The same thing happened in height of popularity of UO or EQ - developers would do whatever is easier for them, even if it means walking all over number of players. It looks like you have to play less popular mmorpg in order to be treated as a human being.
Slashdot Mirror
I think EU plays dangerous game, what if MS decides to make a show out of it and closes, effective immediately, all MS products sale and support in EU? It will cost billions to EU economy to switch to alternatives, educate customers and fix alternatives to the point of being usable by average user. Complying with EU's decision will have a lot more effect on MS than just EU market, the will get more direct competition everywhere and that not what they would want.
For example they missed Electronic Arts vs. Ultima Online smurfs lawsuit. Whole reason we don't get NA volunteers for mmorpgs nowadays. How about case where Sony get suied over suicide of some EQ catass?
This article is incomplete to the point of being misleading. It misses whole point of PC games. I played my first game on PC, it was huge IBM with reels and game I played was Space Invaders.
Did our core stopped spinning again?
Well we are getting closer to being welcomed as some insect's space faring overlords.
Somehow I don't think he was VOTED out of his office.
I a year 2016 you will go to jail for singing lyrics of a copyrighted song in the shower, extra jail time will be added if you botched it badly or got some parts of it wrong.
Actual speed limit is very dependent on condition and type of the car you drive. Better cars can drive faster a lot faster a lot safer. Someone driving brand spanking new sports car with tuned suspension, stability and traction control is a lot less likely to go off the road then someone driving old and poorly maintained economy car with worn shocks and tired springs. Car and road familiarity also play important role, as well as you car's ability to navigate less-than-perfect road conditions. For example RWD car with 60/40 weight distribution can take corner a lot faster than FWD with 70/30, that doesn't come into play at 'normal' driving speeds under normal road conditions but it might if road is wet. At the same time RWD is more likely to fishtail on slippery road under acceleration.
I don't watch TV, adds waste too much of my time while doing it. Instead I purchase and/or download good shows and movies. I also go to movie theatres a lot (and make point of being late to avoid adds). I heavily rely on alternative entertainment - local theatre, jazz and alternative music bars, message boards, and computer games. I'm zealous about my host file, browser and security permissions choices - blocking most advertisers. I don't have flash installed on my home machine to avoid annoying flash adds. I go out of my way to boycott companies with intrusive advertisements that I do get to see (billboards, movie product placement, newspapers).
As I said I hate adds with passion and see them as stealing my money by wasting my time. I don't understand why society as a whole tolerates them and even pays for them. Costs of wasted time due to adds is huge yet everyone doesn't seem to mind.
>>> But if you're not a terrorist ...
But if I'm not a terrorist/ communist/ homosexual/ deviant/ Muslim/ unemployed.... It always boggles my mind how easily people are willing to discard freedoms just because it doesn't affect them. I bet if they took away your 'freedom' to read slashdot you would be all at arms.
>>your email address, your mobile phone number, names of your traveling companions, your name, your address, and your emergency contacts name, address, and phone number.
I'd fill that form with something along the lines billgates@microsoft.com, 202-456-1414, traveling with E. Presley and R. Nixon, My Name, 221B Baker Street, 911...
Information they are asking is outrageous, is there any way they can force you to submit it?
>> I'm pretty sure that a six-stage nuclear device capable of a multi-gigaton blast is a serious threat to anything and everything.
Given we get to go to war with somebody that can reach us, given that we find where they come from... How are we going to get that 'six-stage nuclear device' to where it deals any damage? From where I we ether let hostal alliens kill us or help them kill us by nuking them ON OUR OWN planet.
Is it a good thing "to organize the world's information " ?
It seems I'm one of the few people not excited about this idea. I fear that in the future privacy will be luxury item that very few can afford.
One SF novel I read introduced me to very interesting idea - if everything networked and you can access virtually any kind of information about the only reliable way to have privacy is to drown it in a see of misinformation and irrelevant information. Anything distinctive about you becomes a disadvantage - you can be identified by it and tracked down. So everyone will want to conform and be a Bill Smith from a large city working for large company...
A lot of information out there gets recorded about every individual person - shopping habits, library books, income, medical history, debt, family, education, political affiliations, phone calls history, traffic violations... Only right now most of this information is unorganized and not readily networked, so you can't come up with inexpensive and fast way to retrieve it. On other hand if Google achieves its goal...
You think monopolizing OS is bad? How about monopolizing access to information? How about monopolizing not letting others acces your private information? It just might happen.
Game violence is something most of us grew up here and we are fine, right? Well its right and wrong at the same time. Since we were kids computer games gained whole lot of realism and detail. Its one thing to 'kill' pixilated nazis that cannot be mistaken for human beings because they don't look that real and another thing to ... well nothing right now but we are getting there. IMO in our lifetime we will see movie-realistic graphics and perhaps some emersion-3D technology that would make any games very close to reality. I don't think we have real problem right now with computer game violence, after all games do not feel real that reasonable person, or even typical kid, will mistake it for reality.
>> You can't sue the maker of a legitimate product just because the person using said product has an addictive personality. You can sue maker of a known addictive product for failing to provide adequate warning and selling it to minors. WoW is *designed* to be addictive, most of the game is straight out of Reinforcement Schedules/Conditioning psychology textbook.
I don't see how this will fly for two reasons. First reason is that typical users hate intrusive adds and will even pay others money to clean up computers to stop this annoyance. Now they propose that these adds will come as supposedly unblockable part of the system? How intrusive are we talking about? Second reason is privacy concerns, for effective advertising it has to be targeted and for targeted adds they need to collect or access some private information. I personally have big problem with my OS collecting and sending information about my browsing, shopping habits and personal information. Considering how secure Win is there is no guarantee that information it collected is going to be secure. There is also no guarantee that even if information stays secure its not going to be abused by MS.
WoW proves that innovation does not pay in MMORPGs. We are all doomed to vicious ding/grats treadmil quest for the next shiny for a long while. On a positive note, when we die and go to hell it will feel just like good old catass times, you just won't have to sock it unless they make you to.
Welcome to the future, invalid.
Bigger problem lies with the fact that WoW got to the point where they no longer need to concern themselves with being reasonable or even polite. The same thing happened in height of popularity of UO or EQ - developers would do whatever is easier for them, even if it means walking all over number of players. It looks like you have to play less popular mmorpg in order to be treated as a human being.