1) I buy 100 copies of some tetris clone out of the local discount bin at best buy. This software has no installation "CD key" or anything else.
2) I buy 100 computers.
3) I install a copy of the tetris clone on each computer. Rather than open each package and use the install disc once... i just use one install disc 100 times.
4) I sell the 100 computers, and include one original copy of the software with each computer. So that each computer buyer has 1 installation media, 1 installed copy, and 1 computer.
5) I get sued into the ground for copyright infringement?...
Wait what? Exactly what were the damages to the maker of the Tetris clone here? How was the maker of the tetris clones copyright infringed exactly?
Apple doesn't go after anyone who modifies OS X to run on non-Apple hardware unless they distribute it either.
Distribute has 2 meanings, and it is important to distinguish between them for the purposes of copyright law.
If I open a store, buy CDs, and then resell them. I do not "distribute copies". I DO NOT NEED permission from the copyright holder to do what I am doing.
If I open a store, buy CDs, make duplicates, and then sell them, then I absolutely need permission from the copyright holder.
The question before us is:
If I buy CDs, load them on an ipod. Then sell the ipod ALONG WITH all the original CDs I used to load it, do I need permission from the copyright holder.
The courts appear to be ruling that I do need permission. However this is quite bluntly, a complete farce.
If I buy a computer from parts, then buy a copy of Microsoft Office, and a copy of Adobe Acrobat. Install these programs. Then sell as a complete package, a computer preloaded with Office and Acrobat -- including the original boxed software used to do the installs.
Can you really justify why I would need separate permission from both Microsoft and Adobe to do this under copyright law?
Yup, it sounds like he's doing work. Nothing can touch Windows for games.
Or vertically integrated Point of sale systems in a given industry... from iqMetrix for Cellular to VisualEyes for Opticians to Pro-Repair for Repair shops. Not to mention accounting software. CRM/Business Intelligence. Or shipping management.
RFID tracking systems for warehouse managment. FleetTracking and Asset Tracking systems.
Or Programming two way Radios. Updating firmware on Samsung cell phones. Battery analyzer software. (e.g. Cadex Battery Shop) Medical instrument softare (e.g. Medmont Studio medmont.com), Mobile Customer Experience (mce-sys.com), computer controlled lathes (dac-intl.com)...
Nothing can touch Windows for industry specific applications.
Pretty much anyone "doing work" needs windows. The occasional exception are linux/unix based systems that are usually sold as a complete embedded package.
Mac OS X support is relatively rare to non-existent.
That isn't "obscurity" in the context of "security THROUGH obscurity". The word "through" is important there.
Of course it is. The keyhole is secured "through" obscurity.
You can add obscurity without making the security dependent upon the obscurity.
Adding obscurity adds to the security. It is a more secure system than it was because the obscurity layer hardens it. Thus the overall security is dependant in part to the obscurity.
But the system, in the end, still depends upon the original security model. Once the correct key hole is known, the lock still must be cracked.
If I have a zero day exploit vs your lock, then your lock isn't offering you any security either. The fact that the correct keyhole is hidden might save your ass though.
Obscurity is a LAYER of security. Nothing more, but nothing less either.
A hacker with a zero day exploit vs a particular ssh server will blast ranges of ip addresses on the standard ssh port and get in wherever he finds a vulnerable server. Simply moving your ssh server to an unusual port will probably save you more often than not from that sort of attack. Its a lot more work and a lot easier to detect and block someone running a comprehensive port scan against you... even from a botnet.
So that makes the Mac a very worthwhile purchase.:-)
I guess Microsoft should simply rewrite the EULA to make it against the license to run Windows on apple branded software; and any attempt to do so will be a violation of copyright a la the Psystar story.
I mean Apple got away basically the equivalent, and this thread is full of smug posters who are claiming "I bought a mac because it runs everything else plus OSX too!"
So Microsoft could pull the rug out. And then you'd have to choose. And faced with actually having to choose, most people would choose Microsoft.
I can honestly say that it's been 4 years since there was any software I've wanted to run that was Windows only.
Yay for you. Its been 10 minutes since I logged out of Steam on my Mac and booted up windows because the selection of Mac software is abysmal.
Their activities were blatantly and obviously illegal.
violating a licensing agreement is not "illegal"
Their whole market was based on selling hardware to run software that wasn't licensed to run on that hardware.
The real problem is that Apple's market is based on selling software with terms that dictate what hardware you use it with.
What else can you SELL and then dictate how it be used to the customer? If I as a copyright holder sell you a copy of my CD do I get to dictate what brand CD player you use?
Yet apple gets to sell software, and then dictate what brand of hardware you use it with. And if you don't do as they say, then they argue the software is "unlicensed" (since when do you need a license to use something you bought?!). By "buying" it you have the right to use it.
But then if you install it you are making a "copy" and violating copyright law. And that makes it illegal.
Except that you don't actually need a license to install software you bought a copy of. The act of purchasing a copy gives you the right to install it.
You don't need an explicit license to put the software you bought on a hard drive for use, or for that copy to be copied into ram for use, or for portions to be copied into l1/l2/l3 cache for use, or for portions to be swapped out to disk during hibernation.
So it is absolutely an abuse of copyright law to argue that the copy Psystar made to install the software is unlawful "distribution".
That the courts went along with Apple's whole licensing installation copies farce is a tragedy.
Just as in my house key example. The attacker has to know WHICH flower pot has the house key.
The problem is that once that piece of information is uncovered, the entire security implementation is broken.
There are other ways to have obscurity.
What if you put the lock for the door underneath one of the many flower pots, and perhaps even have a completely non-functional keyhole on the door itself.
That is also "security through obscurity".
Moving the lock to an an unusual place certainly doesn't make system any less secure.
And it will arguably foil or at least delay a real attacker.
Especially if the fake keyhole on the door is wired to an alarm...
Running windows with UAC off is like running unix as root.
Only idiots do that.
Granted running windows with UAC on was a bit painful, especially when it was first launched because it was a tad overbearing, and we had a large ecosystem of applications that wrote to folders and registry areas they had no legitimate business in do to lazy or outright bad programming...
But between windows 7 improving the experience and more importantly the general effort of the software developer community to conform to the rules so that their software no longer needs a plethora of "root level" priviledges just to run a basic user level application... Windows got a lot better than it was.
CMPDA (Canadian Motion Picture Distributors Association) ~= MPAA CRIA (Canadian Recording Industry Association) ~= RIAA Fair Dealing ~= Fair Use
Not the same, but not exactly different either.
Fair Dealing in Canada I'd argue is actually superior to fair use in the States.
The Canadian Supreme court clarified in one of its rulings:
Procedurally, a defendant is required to prove that his or her dealing with a work has been fair; however, the fair dealing exception is perhaps more properly understood as an integral part of the Copyright Act than simply a defence. Any act falling within the fair dealing exception will not be an infringement of copyright. The fair dealing exception, like other exceptions in the Copyright Act, is a user's right. In order to maintain the proper balance between the rights of a copyright owner and users' interests, it must not be interpreted restrictively.
This may be marketing speak, but I have heard that the latest VMWare stuff is supposed to handle things like that quite quickly. The salesman even streamed a Youtube video on a thin client.
Its marketing speak, so to speak.
Buffering and then re-streaming a youtube video to a thin client isn't particularly unreasonable, especially as its got hooks for doing exactly that with the embedded movie.
But try heading over to an overwrought html 5 or flash website, and see how it handles INTERACTIVE animation and transparency...where instead of simply loading a new page it slides the old one to the left, while overlaying and fading in the new one.... in response to your navigational clicks, not as a pre-recorded presentation... and it clunks around at 3 FPS if your lucky. On a remote link... it can get down to seconds per frame instead of frames per second.
That's were Thin Clients work best. Low network overhead,
Yeah. On a wired 100Mbps or gigabit lan.
everything is on the backend. Works over any modern "high speed" internet connection.
It works. But its worse than dog shit.
Why send 25MB Flash Animation across a link 15 times, when you can just send the screen scrapes.
Because the animation and transparency I'm talking about is interactive. So it can't be cached or streamed efficiently, and screen scraping loses all hardware acceleration, resulting in a jittery klutzy low frame rate mess.
Its not like you need 250 FPS is it
I don't need 250 FPS. But I'm only getting 3 FPS on a remote link.
There is a place for it, but not every place works with it.
The bane of my existence right now is the trend towards "rich" user interfaces in point of sale systems, and web sites, etc.
Transparency and animation in particular... currently runs like a piece of shit over any sort of remote connection even on the lan, and is even worse to remote locations.
So my wife asks me what a "hemi" actually is the other day... and as I didn't actually know i looked it up...
Its an internal combustion engine where the roof of the cylinder's combustion chamber is a hemisphere. That's it. Its a 100+ year old design that's been in everything from 1940s Ford Trucks to 1980s Porsche 911s.
And today, its lost all nearly all meaning as modern engine designs have rendered actual hemisphere cylinder heads obsolete, making it little more than a brand name that makes about as much sense as boasting about getting a VacuumTube (tm) transister radio.
You do know about credit cards right? There are all kinds of fees for a transaction and this makes a 15 times a $1 fee NOT the same in money earned as a 1 time 15$ fee. It is part of why iTunes is so expensive,... rant rant rant
Look, I'm the poster you responded to, and I don't know what you are going on about. PAYG doesn't require that there be a multitude of tiny transactions.
I'd be happy to pre-pay them in $20 or even $50 lumps, and then chip away at the balance over 3-12 months...
The problem with that from their point of view is that it makes it far too easy for you to walk away.
Agreed. But at the same time, it ensures I never leave completely, because I never left.
The current model, has the casual player in this perpetual frustration cycle... of enjoying the game, and not wanting to quit, but resenting how little they play and pay for it. Sooner or later, they cancel... and then they are gone for good.
My proposal makes it easier for them to walk away... but leaves the door open to come back. I know I would still be playing MMOs today if they had a reasonable pay as you go option.
All of the microtransaction games where you do or do not choose to give them money online all seem kind of skeevy. The ones I've played at least. They all make me feel a little queasy, like a greasy video poker machine in the back of a working class bar. You know it's nothing but a machine for taking away the money of the desperate and ill-informed and just knowing it's there makes you feel bad. That's how the "F2P" games come across for me. I'm not sure there's a remedy, either.
I agree completely. As soon as that's the business model there is an irresistible urge for them to start nickle and diming you, to start designing the game around tempting you to insert another quarter at every turn...
My advice for MMOs is -don't- go this route.
Personally this is what I'd like to see... a pay-as-you-go model... $1/day... and if I hit more than 15 days in a month then it caps at 15$. My problem with MMOs is that I might play a weekend, and then not log in again for 3 weeks... or play daily for a 2-3 weeks and then not log in for a month... I have no problem with $15/mo when I'm "playing" but I don't like seeing the bill for $15 hitting my card and me realizing I've only played 1 evening in the last 4 weeks... so i cancel... and then the next time I want to log in...its not worth the hassle of re-activating and so forth... and i just play somehting else instead.
I'd still play 3 or 4 different MMOs casually if they supported this, and a few more I'd try.. but as it is I'm not sub'd to any of them.
Unfortunately, if an MMO did that many of its current subscribers would pay less, and its unknown whether they'd pick up more players to offset the loss as a result... meanwhile many of the F2P models out there actually end up costing most players MORE than it did when it was a subscription game... which just solidifies my objection to the f2p model.
You need to leave this country and experience the whole fucking world, because you've got no fucking clue how rich $7/hour part-timer workers in Americans are.
And in context of this discussion what is your fucking point? Are you arguing that American's should be
This is fucking poor, asshole
Before they are tax exempt?
Really? Because otherwise its completely irrelevant to THIS discussion how much worse things can get.
These are people with cable television, cellphones, and so on.
Oh my, Cellphones and many of them are cancelling their land lines. And if you think having a phone is "optional" for someone looking to get a job... pull your head out of your ass.
And cable TV? Good gracious... probably one of the cheapest entertainment options we have and its often bundled in some way with internet. (Which is also not really optional these days if you want to be part of society.)
I don't look at a guy who has a cable internet and a cellphone as a paragon of wealth, anymore than if he has shoes, pants, or a 10 year old beater.
Lots of discretionary spending
Right. Because if they can afford a hoop to go with their stick they're not poor enough yet, right?
For that matter, society would fall apart if everyone was a plumber, or if everyone started doing any single activity. Society requires several tasks (like investment and various kinds of labor)
Society doesn't require rich people to invest in things. It just requires people to invest in things. There is no necessity for much of that wealth to be concentrated in one person.
and they are all compensated in proportion to their demand.
No. No they aren't. Not even close.
Labour is coercive. You think the people at walmart are compensated in proportion to the demand for people to work there? Not hardly.
The only reason any one does the work is because its even more dire for them if they don't. As in they starve and lose their homes.
There aren't enough good jobs, and people have to take crappy ones at low pay to survive.
In a perfect world, they would quit, and start their own business... but that's harder to do than say, and it usually requires substantial resources to get off the ground.
Slashdot Mirror
Yes and??
1) I buy 100 copies of some tetris clone out of the local discount bin at best buy. This software has no installation "CD key" or anything else.
2) I buy 100 computers.
3) I install a copy of the tetris clone on each computer. Rather than open each package and use the install disc once... i just use one install disc 100 times.
4) I sell the 100 computers, and include one original copy of the software with each computer. So that each computer buyer has 1 installation media, 1 installed copy, and 1 computer.
5) I get sued into the ground for copyright infringement?...
Wait what? Exactly what were the damages to the maker of the Tetris clone here? How was the maker of the tetris clones copyright infringed exactly?
That's precisely the same situation Apple is in.
Apple doesn't go after anyone who modifies OS X to run on non-Apple hardware unless they distribute it either.
Distribute has 2 meanings, and it is important to distinguish between them for the purposes of copyright law.
If I open a store, buy CDs, and then resell them. I do not "distribute copies". I DO NOT NEED permission from the copyright holder to do what I am doing.
If I open a store, buy CDs, make duplicates, and then sell them, then I absolutely need permission from the copyright holder.
The question before us is:
If I buy CDs, load them on an ipod. Then sell the ipod ALONG WITH all the original CDs I used to load it, do I need permission from the copyright holder.
The courts appear to be ruling that I do need permission. However this is quite bluntly, a complete farce.
If I buy a computer from parts, then buy a copy of Microsoft Office, and a copy of Adobe Acrobat. Install these programs. Then sell as a complete package, a computer preloaded with Office and Acrobat -- including the original boxed software used to do the installs.
Can you really justify why I would need separate permission from both Microsoft and Adobe to do this under copyright law?
Yup, it sounds like he's doing work. Nothing can touch Windows for games.
Or vertically integrated Point of sale systems in a given industry... from iqMetrix for Cellular to VisualEyes for Opticians to Pro-Repair for Repair shops. Not to mention accounting software. CRM/Business Intelligence. Or shipping management.
RFID tracking systems for warehouse managment. FleetTracking and Asset Tracking systems.
Or Programming two way Radios. Updating firmware on Samsung cell phones. Battery analyzer software. (e.g. Cadex Battery Shop) Medical instrument softare (e.g. Medmont Studio medmont.com), Mobile Customer Experience (mce-sys.com), computer controlled lathes (dac-intl.com)...
Nothing can touch Windows for industry specific applications.
Pretty much anyone "doing work" needs windows. The occasional exception are linux/unix based systems that are usually sold as a complete embedded package.
Mac OS X support is relatively rare to non-existent.
That isn't "obscurity" in the context of "security THROUGH obscurity". The word "through" is important there.
Of course it is. The keyhole is secured "through" obscurity.
You can add obscurity without making the security dependent upon the obscurity.
Adding obscurity adds to the security. It is a more secure system than it was because the obscurity layer hardens it. Thus the overall security is dependant in part to the obscurity.
But the system, in the end, still depends upon the original security model. Once the correct key hole is known, the lock still must be cracked.
If I have a zero day exploit vs your lock, then your lock isn't offering you any security either. The fact that the correct keyhole is hidden might save your ass though.
Obscurity is a LAYER of security. Nothing more, but nothing less either.
A hacker with a zero day exploit vs a particular ssh server will blast ranges of ip addresses on the standard ssh port and get in wherever he finds a vulnerable server. Simply moving your ssh server to an unusual port will probably save you more often than not from that sort of attack. Its a lot more work and a lot easier to detect and block someone running a comprehensive port scan against you... even from a botnet.
So that makes the Mac a very worthwhile purchase. :-)
I guess Microsoft should simply rewrite the EULA to make it against the license to run Windows on apple branded software; and any attempt to do so will be a violation of copyright a la the Psystar story.
I mean Apple got away basically the equivalent, and this thread is full of smug posters who are claiming "I bought a mac because it runs everything else plus OSX too!"
So Microsoft could pull the rug out. And then you'd have to choose. And faced with actually having to choose, most people would choose Microsoft.
I can honestly say that it's been 4 years since there was any software I've wanted to run that was Windows only.
Yay for you. Its been 10 minutes since I logged out of Steam on my Mac and booted up windows because the selection of Mac software is abysmal.
Their activities were blatantly and obviously illegal.
violating a licensing agreement is not "illegal"
Their whole market was based on selling hardware to run software that wasn't licensed to run on that hardware.
The real problem is that Apple's market is based on selling software with terms that dictate what hardware you use it with.
What else can you SELL and then dictate how it be used to the customer? If I as a copyright holder sell you a copy of my CD do I get to dictate what brand CD player you use?
Yet apple gets to sell software, and then dictate what brand of hardware you use it with. And if you don't do as they say, then they argue the software is "unlicensed" (since when do you need a license to use something you bought?!). By "buying" it you have the right to use it.
But then if you install it you are making a "copy" and violating copyright law. And that makes it illegal.
Except that you don't actually need a license to install software you bought a copy of. The act of purchasing a copy gives you the right to install it.
You don't need an explicit license to put the software you bought on a hard drive for use, or for that copy to be copied into ram for use, or for portions to be copied into l1/l2/l3 cache for use, or for portions to be swapped out to disk during hibernation.
So it is absolutely an abuse of copyright law to argue that the copy Psystar made to install the software is unlawful "distribution".
That the courts went along with Apple's whole licensing installation copies farce is a tragedy.
Just as in my house key example. The attacker has to know WHICH flower pot has the house key.
The problem is that once that piece of information is uncovered, the entire security implementation is broken.
There are other ways to have obscurity.
What if you put the lock for the door underneath one of the many flower pots, and perhaps even have a completely non-functional keyhole on the door itself.
That is also "security through obscurity".
Moving the lock to an an unusual place certainly doesn't make system any less secure.
And it will arguably foil or at least delay a real attacker.
Especially if the fake keyhole on the door is wired to an alarm...
No blu-ray is no great loss.
Unless you've got a 100+ bluray discs and your scratching your head as to why a thousands dollar+ laptop has no option to play them.
I've got a Macbook pro, and the lack of blu ray is pretty annoying.
it's something meaningless like: "setup.exe wants permission to write to your hard drive. Cancel or allow?"
Fuck should I know?
Yes, you should have some vague sense that you had just initiated an install...
What would you like it to to do exactly?
No, only idiots run software that is questionable enough to require UAC in the first place.
Meh... One could say much the same about SELinux really.
First off, with sudo, you're explicitly saying "give me super user privileges" - it's not the OS doing it for no defined reason.
Right, sudo is like selecting "run as administrator", which is for a defined reason.
Secondly, in Ubuntu, you only run across that dialog when updating or installing software,
Or altering certain settings.... or hardware related...
and it's always in response to explicitly clicking on a button
No its not. It can pop up resulting from a scheduled script, or triggered by other events.
the dialog box provides a clear reason WHY you need your password.
In my experience its no more clear than the reasons UAC gives.
In both cases that's NOTHING like UAC.
Sure if by "nothing like" one means "exactly like".
Running windows with UAC off is like running unix as root.
Only idiots do that.
Granted running windows with UAC on was a bit painful, especially when it was first launched because it was a tad overbearing, and we had a large ecosystem of applications that wrote to folders and registry areas they had no legitimate business in do to lazy or outright bad programming...
But between windows 7 improving the experience and more importantly the general effort of the software developer community to conform to the rules so that their software no longer needs a plethora of "root level" priviledges just to run a basic user level application...
Windows got a lot better than it was.
Norton products especially at that point in time said that about pretty much everything that tries to connect to the internet.
The MPAA, RIAA and fair use don't exist in Canada
CMPDA (Canadian Motion Picture Distributors Association) ~= MPAA
CRIA (Canadian Recording Industry Association) ~= RIAA
Fair Dealing ~= Fair Use
Not the same, but not exactly different either.
Fair Dealing in Canada I'd argue is actually superior to fair use in the States.
The Canadian Supreme court clarified in one of its rulings:
This may be marketing speak, but I have heard that the latest VMWare stuff is supposed to handle things like that quite quickly. The salesman even streamed a Youtube video on a thin client.
Its marketing speak, so to speak.
Buffering and then re-streaming a youtube video to a thin client isn't particularly unreasonable, especially as its got hooks for doing exactly that with the embedded movie.
But try heading over to an overwrought html 5 or flash website, and see how it handles INTERACTIVE animation and transparency...where instead of simply loading a new page it slides the old one to the left, while overlaying and fading in the new one.... in response to your navigational clicks, not as a pre-recorded presentation... and it clunks around at 3 FPS if your lucky. On a remote link... it can get down to seconds per frame instead of frames per second.
That's were Thin Clients work best. Low network overhead,
Yeah. On a wired 100Mbps or gigabit lan.
everything is on the backend. Works over any modern "high speed" internet connection.
It works. But its worse than dog shit.
Why send 25MB Flash Animation across a link 15 times, when you can just send the screen scrapes.
Because the animation and transparency I'm talking about is interactive. So it can't be cached or streamed efficiently, and screen scraping loses all hardware acceleration, resulting in a jittery klutzy low frame rate mess.
Its not like you need 250 FPS is it
I don't need 250 FPS. But I'm only getting 3 FPS on a remote link.
Because last time i checked, C is for cookie, thats good enough for me
You, like me are too old.
Cookie Monster has been castrated. Cookies are a "sometimes food", and he mostly eats vegetables now.
And Elmo is the antithesis of all that was ever good about the show.
There is a place for it, but not every place works with it.
The bane of my existence right now is the trend towards "rich" user interfaces in point of sale systems, and web sites, etc.
Transparency and animation in particular... currently runs like a piece of shit over any sort of remote connection even on the lan, and is even worse to remote locations.
It's a Dodge(tm) Ram(tm) pickup with Hemi(tm) V8.
So my wife asks me what a "hemi" actually is the other day... and as I didn't actually know i looked it up...
Its an internal combustion engine where the roof of the cylinder's combustion chamber is a hemisphere. That's it. Its a 100+ year old design that's been in everything from 1940s Ford Trucks to 1980s Porsche 911s.
And today, its lost all nearly all meaning as modern engine designs have rendered actual hemisphere cylinder heads obsolete, making it little more than a brand name that makes about as much sense as boasting about getting a VacuumTube (tm) transister radio.
You do know about credit cards right? There are all kinds of fees for a transaction and this makes a 15 times a $1 fee NOT the same in money earned as a 1 time 15$ fee. It is part of why iTunes is so expensive,... rant rant rant
Look, I'm the poster you responded to, and I don't know what you are going on about. PAYG doesn't require that there be a multitude of tiny transactions.
I'd be happy to pre-pay them in $20 or even $50 lumps, and then chip away at the balance over 3-12 months...
The problem with that from their point of view is that it makes it far too easy for you to walk away.
Agreed. But at the same time, it ensures I never leave completely, because I never left.
The current model, has the casual player in this perpetual frustration cycle... of enjoying the game, and not wanting to quit, but resenting how little they play and pay for it. Sooner or later, they cancel... and then they are gone for good.
My proposal makes it easier for them to walk away... but leaves the door open to come back. I know I would still be playing MMOs today if they had a reasonable pay as you go option.
All of the microtransaction games where you do or do not choose to give them money online all seem kind of skeevy. The ones I've played at least. They all make me feel a little queasy, like a greasy video poker machine in the back of a working class bar. You know it's nothing but a machine for taking away the money of the desperate and ill-informed and just knowing it's there makes you feel bad. That's how the "F2P" games come across for me. I'm not sure there's a remedy, either.
I agree completely. As soon as that's the business model there is an irresistible urge for them to start nickle and diming you, to start designing the game around tempting you to insert another quarter at every turn...
My advice for MMOs is -don't- go this route.
Personally this is what I'd like to see... a pay-as-you-go model... $1/day... and if I hit more than 15 days in a month then it caps at 15$. .its not worth the hassle of re-activating and so forth... and i just play somehting else instead.
My problem with MMOs is that I might play a weekend, and then not log in again for 3 weeks... or play daily for a 2-3 weeks and then not log in for a month... I have no problem with $15/mo when I'm "playing" but I don't like seeing the bill for $15 hitting my card and me realizing I've only played 1 evening in the last 4 weeks... so i cancel... and then the next time I want to log in..
I'd still play 3 or 4 different MMOs casually if they supported this, and a few more I'd try.. but as it is I'm not sub'd to any of them.
Unfortunately, if an MMO did that many of its current subscribers would pay less, and its unknown whether they'd pick up more players to offset the loss as a result... meanwhile many of the F2P models out there actually end up costing most players MORE than it did when it was a subscription game... which just solidifies my objection to the f2p model.
You need to leave this country and experience the whole fucking world, because you've got no fucking clue how rich $7/hour part-timer workers in Americans are.
And in context of this discussion what is your fucking point? Are you arguing that American's should be
This is fucking poor, asshole
Before they are tax exempt?
Really? Because otherwise its completely irrelevant to THIS discussion how much worse things can get.
These are people with cable television, cellphones, and so on.
Oh my, Cellphones and many of them are cancelling their land lines. And if you think having a phone is "optional" for someone looking to get a job... pull your head out of your ass.
And cable TV? Good gracious... probably one of the cheapest entertainment options we have and its often bundled in some way with internet. (Which is also not really optional these days if you want to be part of society.)
I don't look at a guy who has a cable internet and a cellphone as a paragon of wealth, anymore than if he has shoes, pants, or a 10 year old beater.
Lots of discretionary spending
Right. Because if they can afford a hoop to go with their stick they're not poor enough yet, right?
For that matter, society would fall apart if everyone was a plumber, or if everyone started doing any single activity. Society requires several tasks (like investment and various kinds of labor)
Society doesn't require rich people to invest in things. It just requires people to invest in things. There is no necessity for much of that wealth to be concentrated in one person.
and they are all compensated in proportion to their demand.
No. No they aren't. Not even close.
Labour is coercive. You think the people at walmart are compensated in proportion to the demand for people to work there? Not hardly.
The only reason any one does the work is because its even more dire for them if they don't. As in they starve and lose their homes.
There aren't enough good jobs, and people have to take crappy ones at low pay to survive.
In a perfect world, they would quit, and start their own business... but that's harder to do than say, and it usually requires substantial resources to get off the ground.