"is that Marx was specifically laying out the communist manifesto for smaller countries (no larger than Germany or the UK) as he did not expect it to be applicable to larger countries like Russia or China."
Well, that, and if you have a dictatorship led elite running the show, then it's not actually really full on communism. I suspect that such regimes built on unaccountable parties who have much more power and possesions than the general population from the outset which inevitably contradicts the goals of communism was part of the problem too.
Actually, by law, in the UK, the service provider does now have an obligation to unlock the device for you. Companies like Vodafone recognise this so explicitly now that you can ask before your contract is even up for an unlock code.
It's really not as clear cut as you think it is. It's a grey area, and I think it's likely a court would side against Valve. Whether the court would have any power to do anything with Valve being based in the US though is a different story I suppose, though few companies would risk isolating any potential business by defying a foreign court.
I'd honestly be surprised even in the US where consumer laws are weaker if Valve had a case tbh, after a quick Google though it seems no one's dared to try and challenge it in court yet though.
Fundamentally though you're applying binary logic (which isn't suprising from people who post on Slashdot- that is after all what the community tends to specialise in) to this discussion, and in law it's much less clear cut. There is much more scope for what is generally deemed to be fair regardless of what contract was or wasn't accepted now. It's no longer simply "You signed it, you live with it". This is of course not always a good thing either though as something so arbitrary as "fairness" can work the other way - a year or two back the dogs trust (or some similar charity) was donated around £2million in one lady's will, however her daughter contested this in court saying she deserved some, and despite the dogs trust having offered to give her a fair share the court awarded against the dogs trust and took the willed money away from them and gave it to the daughter, personally I think in such a scenario that fucking stinks- clearly the deceased wanted the money to go to charity, not the daughter, but there you have it- the point is, for better or worse, it's not all about the contract anymore as you are proclaiming that it is.
"That big license agreement that you agree to before signing up for Steam and before every Steam purchase would disagree."
That fact EULAs can't trump statutory rights, such as the afformentioned Consumer Protection Act would beg to differ.
Your argument is basically that Valve can come and murder you, as long as they put that you grant them this right in their EULA. Well, no, actually, they can't. The user not reading it would not act as a defence.
"The only agreement that they have with regard to the game is the one that you agreed to when you installed it"
Well, and, you know, that matter of the law that governs both you, the end user, and them, as a company. Let's not forget that elephant in the room shall we?
So how does this work where I bought a game such as Dawn of War II as an actual boxed copy but was forced to activate via Steam?
I do not see how it's my problem to believe that this was an actual purchase. Nor do I think for a second that the courts would disagree in fact.
I suspect that you are wrong, that in at least some cases such as this it is Valve's problem, they're just playing fast and loose with the law whilst they can get away with it.
I think you're assuming it's a social issue that can be solved through education, rather than an inherent issue with human psychology.
The fundamental point is that we might in fact well die back somewhat, that is a natural result of every other species that exists when it becomes populated beyond a sustainable point, in fact we've even seen it happen with the human race before. So many wars have been the result of a battle for resources where one group felt desperate enough to risk their lives to acquire greater access to resources to support their ways.
Of course, some humans are capable of stepping above this with enough education, but can we even get everyone to the level of education needed to be capable of being meaningfully introspective and capable of looking at problems more rationally? I'm not convinced we can- education in itself to this level is a limited resource.
Even assuming that you still have the fractious nature of the human race creating a potential for trouble, some people just inherently aren't capable of being rational, they're naturally just too emotionally driven, some are stubborn and can't accept anyone elses opinion- there's no changing that other than to breed them out, and I'm not sure that's a smart idea because their traits are probably inherently useful in other situations instead.
Hmm, definetely not buying anything from Steam ever again. I've never done anything illegal with it nor do I intend to but the idea that they can arbitrarily steal back from you what you have purchased from them is sickening.
Yeah, because all Russians have been sat sleeping for the last 20 years and haven't actually produced anything since the fall of the USSR.
Yes. 20 years.
It seems a little odd to assume they've not produced any IP or content worth protecting in 20 years, but somehow had some worth protecting before that. Not to mention that Russia took on all the obligations of the former USSR so is actually just a continuation of that entity albeit with some big changes. The USSR didn't simply vanish out of existence and cease to exist, it morphed rapidly into what we now know as Russia.
You're right about the problem and right that something needs to change.
The problem is how you go about organising and managing that sort of change and the fact is, current governing structures are the best we've managed to implement so far.
Your solution is fantasy, you suggest that if as an individual you figure out "the solution", then you should work to implement that. You seem to miss the point that there's another 6.5bn people out there also trying to implement their ownh, often different and opposing solution, and that when said opposing solutions clash, as they inevitably will, you get stalemate and are back to square one- a point of inaction.
The times I've had the opportunity to introduce FOSS solutions in public sector in the UK the response was resoundingly positive.
The problem is during my time working in public sector there weren't any people like me deciding on the big contracts. The people deciding one larger rollouts were more interested in how hot the sales girl was.
Unfortunately for FOSS, FOSS lobby groups don't send out any hot sales girls to be perved at by 55 yr old men waiting out their last few years for early retirement with a gold plated final salary pension scheme. Most those people in government don't give a shit what the product is, once they've reached that level they're just holding on for an easy retirement and when they're at that point, and they're that apathetic towards their jobs they're just swayed by things that make waiting out those last few years a bit easier- attractive young ladies, invitations to nice places to "examine new technology offerings", free "gifts", that sort of thing.
Public sector is just a game to those people in it at this kind of level, it's a way out of doing a real worthwhile job where there's real actual accountability. It's an easy ride, with a fat payoff if you never actually managed to get a decent wage through actually performing well and being a competent employee as you must in private sector much more of the time.
I never found brand names a barrier to entry in public sector, on the contrary we ended up lumped with some really unheard of, really shit software because the people at those firms knew how to play the public sector game- the quality of their product was irrelevant, a few hot sales girls, a trip to their nice offices coupled with all expenses paid meals at a nice restaurant and some free gifts, that was all that was needed for the contract. Unfortuately the people who actually do the work in public sector are then left to pick up the pieces when said system no one's heard of before inevitably fails.
"You know, the problem with all this cloaking stuff is... we're not fighting wars where it matters."
I don't know why people still parrot this mindset, it's so stupid.
On 10th September 2001 people would've said it's stupid to kit up for a prolonged war against an insurgency, a day later they'd have been wrong.
Britain recently just ditched it's carrier fleet for about 8 years, a few weeks later they find they're needing to launch airstrikes on Tripoli which has meant expensive flights from the UK and Italy requiring mid-air refuelling, and leaving us with a vastly slower reaction time than would otherwise have been possible if we'd kept our carriers.
The fact is you don't know what's going to happen tommorrow- you don't know if North Korea is going to shell the South again, the South is going to respond, and a full blown war is going to start. You don't know if Iran is going to do a nuclear test, and Israel is going to strike it leading to a full blown land war in the middle east. You don't know if Assad is just going to say fuck it, and massacre an entire city of 100,000 like his father slaughtered a city of 40,000 30 years ago forcing a need for intervention.
You just do not know, and that's why it's stupid to buy purely based on what we're doing now, and why it's sensible to plan for what we might be dealing with maybe next week, maybe never, but where the threat still exists and may have to be faced.
The C# language exists separately from the CLR. You don't need a runtime if you have a compiler that compiles C# straight into x86 instructions or whatever.
But what quality of life would we have if the Lib Dems chose to oppose tuition fees, collapse the coalition, and prevent the Tories dealing with our deficit - the largest in the Eurozone IIRC?
I'm not really partisan myself, all parties have some good ideas, and I agree all 3 main parties are shit. But I still think the Lib Dems are the best of a bad bunch if I had to pick an individual party, but for what it's worth I've supported all 3 parties at some point in my life as they've twisted and turned through their policies, and I'm swaying more back towards Labour now also the longer the Lib Dems fail to asser their power.
I'm concerned that the Lib Dems get the blame for tuition fees, when 77% of the country voted against the Lib Dems- how can they be expected to implement their policies with such little support for them at the ballot box? The fact is, more people voted for the Tories, and the increased tuition fees were without a doubt their brainchild so why do people act suprised that we ended up with them?
Re:Why are they obligated to be fair and balanced?
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"The curious thing about calling someone "right wing" is that your accusation can never be wrong. Everyone is "right wing" from someone's perspective. So what information is conveyed? None. It's merely an insult, not a criticism."
You've reached an interesting conclusion, but the problem is you completely missed the point.
You assume that suggesting he was right wing was ever even meant to be a criticism, so jumping to the idea that it was an insult from that flawed premise is absurd.
No, the point of the post I got banned for was to make it clear that Andrew's views align with Murdoch's (i.e. what is commonly accepted to be right wing), I did not suggest there was a problem with him having those right wing views, merely that it was not suprising that his viewpoint aligned so closely to Murdoch's - their political view follows a very similar path, a clearly right wing, for whatever that's worth.
Yet Andrew has thrown his teddy out the pram before, in fact, so did the moderator there Sarah Bee, when others have suggested they and The Register held predominently right wing views- and you see, there's the problem, the only people assuming insult from the suggestion that they are right wing, was themselves, not I, not other commentators, but themselves. They don't like being called right wing, but their viewpoints, fit well under what is commonly accepted to be right wing viewpoints- pro-privatisation, climate change deniers (or whatever the PC term is nowadays) and so forth.
You are however right about one thing- that I think poorly of Orlowski, but it's not for his viewpoint- each to their own. No, it's the inability to reflect on his own views, to accept others opinions, in his view he is right, and anyone else is not simply ignored, but where he has the power, outright silenced.
Worse, you clearly recognise there's a difference between a journalist and a commentator, and I agree about your differentiation between them, the problem is Orlowski has, on numerous occasions, claimed to be a journalist, yet has demonstrably - no, not simply in my opinion, but demonstrably - been wrong on a number of occasions, and rather than accept that, tried to silence those who point it out in response to his articles
It's odd because you (and the GP) are arguing that I'm suggesting people I disagree with aren't worthy of opinion. That's completely wrong, I'm arguing the opposite and pointing out that the problem with Andrew Orlowski is doing precisely what you accuse me of, and that's why he's an idiot- everyone should get their say, even people making a point or demonstrating that Andrew Orlowski is wrong. I'm fine with Andrew Orlowski having his opinion, I have a problem with him censoring counter-opinions and people pointing out flaws in his reasoning or arguments.
Re:Why are they obligated to be fair and balanced?
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I'm saying the media is given a position of power- it is granted, in some cases, the ability to break the law in the case of public good.
With that power should come responsibility- the responsibility to use that shield of being the media to produce factual and informative news.
Publications not doing that should not legally be allowed to class themselves as media, journalists, news sites and so forth.
For what it's worth I don't think there is any value in getting a completely false story- if there was some element of truth then that's interesting, but when a completely false story is given the same weight as a factual story and large elements of the public are misled because they beleive the publication behind the false story is something it isn't - a factual news outlet, then there's a problem.
Your right, your vote wouldn't make it any more likely that you'd get the exact politician you wanted, but it'd mean the politician you did get would have to cater more to your tastes (assuming you're not in an absolute minority group- which is where PR is superior also).
It wouldn't encourage 3 party any more than it'd encourage 5 party, or 2 party. It'd just encourage which ever group can organise to get their politicians to be more representative of the will of the majority of the people which however one cuts it, is still better than FPTP where politicians only have to be representative of a minority.
I do fundamentally agree as I say PR is better, and I do fundamentally agree the benefits of AV are small, but it was still better than the status quo nontheless.
For what it's worth I know the Lib Dems have been a dissapointment too but you seem to be staunchly anti-Lib Dem, may I ask why that is? What would make you specifically single them out over say, Labour, or the Conservatives? I ask because I'm concerned it's another area where people have been blindsided- absolutely the Lib Dems should've stood up for what they believe in more but much of the hatred of them comes down to the whole tuition fees drama, yet the Tories wanted it even higher- £12,000, the Lib Dems got it down proportional to their parliamentary share in the coalition, to £9,000, yet, being an immature party, not used to being in power were stupid enough to let themselves become a scapegoat for what was effectively a Tory policy. Tell me, what is worse, a party wanting £12,000 tuition fees, or a party wanting none, but not getting enough support from the electorate to pursue that policy and being forced to choose between a compromise of £9,000 or an unstable government at a time of massive economic woe?
Perhaps there's another reason you hate them, but this seems to be why most people hate them- again, falling hook line and sinker for the Murdoch media FUD and not looking at it rationally- i.e. seeing what percentage of the vote they got relative to implementation of the policies you want. People seemed to expect them to force through their policies, even when the very same people never took the chance to vote for them.
But anyway, you'll have to excuse me for ranting, I like the person further up this thread am sick of British politics, and am sick of how idiotically gullable our electorate is when it comes to swallowing media FUD.
Why's it a pointless compromise? It's still better than the current system as I pointed out.
On the contrary, having AV would increase the chance of PR because it'd mean MPs would have to be more representative of the people and less representative of vested interests, and vested interests are firmly against PR.
MPs would HAVE to change their politcal stance or they wouldn't get elected- it's that simple, and it's laughable to suggest it could consider tactical voting because that's precisely the problem we have under FPTP- worse in fact, many people have given up even voting at all.
Do you really think we're closer to PR now than ever? seriously? All electoral reform is now completely off the table because people like you fell hook line and sinker for Murdoch and the Tories anti-AV FUD. We can't even talk about PR now because opponents of electoral reform can now point to AV and say look, the people don't want electoral reform. You've handed them exactly what they wanted- decades more entrenchment of FPTP.
A vote against AV was a vote for the status quo, and that's a major problem.
Not really, PR and AV solve two different problems. Either is better than the current system though.
Proportional representation ensures that every vote is equal, and ensures that the result of an election is proportional to the will of the people.
AV doesn't ensure proportionality but it does ensure more balanced representation. Under FPTP (the current system), an MP generally only has to appease 25% - 30% of their electorate to get elected, with the other 70%+ of their electorate being potentially entirely unrepresented. AV makes sure that at least half of every constituency is at least somewhat represented. It forces MPs to be more moderate, such that if you had say a constituency made up of 30% labour, 25% Tory, 15% Lib Dem, 10% BNP, 10% UKIP, 10% other then currently the MP would only have to cater to the will of Labour voters to win, and could then put forward pro-Labour policy against the will of 70% of his constituency in the elction. With AV however he would have to ensure that whilst his strongest lobby was still Labour, he'd at least have to be somewhat supportive of the Tory and Lib Dem voters (or whatever other mix you want) so that their views are heard.
AV wasn't about appeasing Lib Dem MPs and if you think it was then you're a fine example of the type of politically inept idiot that plagues the UK, and one of those idiots who fell hook line and sinker for the FUD.
PR is IMO better than AV, as I'm not a fan of local representatives if I'm honest- I think they're largely pointless. But AV was undoubtedly a massive step up from the current system, and voting against it to hurt the Lib Dems was a classic case of cutting your nose of to spite your face- with AV we'd have a much healthier political system that was far more moderate and far more representative of the will of the people. That's a massive improvement on the current situation where laws are dictated by whatever current ruling minority manages to just break that 30% - 35% support mark.
But ignoring Andrew Orlowski there's countless issues with their other authors too. Lewis Page is more reasonable in allowing dissenting comment in response to his articles, but his articles are time and time again completely ignorant. He for example often criticises British defence projects citing American options as being much cheaper by pure monetary, but despite having it pointed out to him time and time again he fails to realise that a $10bn UK defence project for say, some new helicopters is still cheaper than buying the helicopters for $8bn from the US, when the UK project brings back $5bn in eventual tax, whereas the $8bn US project it's just money straight out the British economy.
Another example is the Eurofighter typhoons ground attack capabilities- he constantly derides the project because it wont have proper air to ground capabilities until 2020, but he's wrong because it wont have proper bombing capabilities until then- it's had Brimstone missiles added to it throughout this year. He ignores AGMs and focusses on bombing capability and then extrapolates that to say it can't do air to ground at all until 2020. This is complete and utter outright FUD.
He's similarly criticised the armament of Type 45 destroyers, claiming they only have two weapons or similarly, but a quick look on the Royal Navy's own website and the specs of the ships confirmed that yet again, he's completely wrong.
You can see this pattern with most of their staff- their articles are just often outright false. Where they're not false, they completely miss fundamental points. Where they don't miss fundamental points, they just outright lie.
So that's really why they have the reputation- they're just too agenda based. Their writers all vehemently pursue their own political agendas without care for facts, without care for reason, and worst of all- without care for the truth. That's not journalism, that's propaganda.
For me they didn't have any credibility to lose. I posted a response to one of Andrew Orlowski's articles the other week replying to someone that they shouldn't be surprised to see him agreeing with Murdoch as he's always had a historically right wing viewpoint.
That evening I couldn't log in, and every post I'd ever made to The Register had been deleted.
A site whose journalists can't even handle a post made summing up their political ideology in a polite, fair, and well sourced manner is quite comical. The worst part? my post was actually accepted by their moderator and in true Andrew Orlowski style was retroactively moderated away by him a few hours later (along with the account bad, and retroactive deletion of all my posts ever) I don't think Andrew likes it when he has to face intelligent response to his articles. None of their other bloggers... er I mean "journalists" are any more intelligent, although at least the others don't throw a hissy account banning, post deleting fit when someone disagrees with them. Of course, one might argue that it was my previous posts or something that got me a ban, and to an extent that's possibly true- not that I was trolling there, but that I often only posted to correct faults in their stories, to point out potential issues with their reasoning or to offer counter-opinions to their opinion pieces, but their readership seemed to agree with me as I had over 3000 upvotes against 1000 downvotes with even many of those downvotes stemming from engage in fanboy heavy discussions and daring to criticise some pet manufacturer's actions (cell phones, consoles etc.).
Then on top of that it wouldn't be so bad if it weren't for the fact Andrew Orlowski was constantly attacking sites like Wikipedia complaining about the clique there denying dissenting responses, or his complaints about CRU refusing to be transparent and open. None of that would be a problem if it weren't for the fact he himself often outright refuses to let people comment on his articles, and the few times he does, he goes through the already moderated comments and removes those that point out, with evidence, why he is wrong. At that point it's just sheer hypocrisy and any validity in the points he has to make is lost on the fact he needs to sort out his own inability to ensure he follows the facts, and accept that sometimes he may have been wrong before criticising others on it.
It's amusing too, because all I had to do to get round their ban on my account was request a new password, so it seems they're pretty technically inept too. This was made more amusing by the fact I then really did post a few troll comments to wind them up a bit, only to be banned again, to find that yep, I could still reset my password and repeated this for a few days before it got boring. I swear their admin must've been sat their thinking "How does he keep coming back?".
As you say, credibility goes as your customers say it does. Their actions have added me to the long list of people who also believe the site is a joke. The only reason to go there is for comedy - no, not the terribly written articles - I mean BOFH. But even that seems to be rarely produced now.
Really, The Register is like the internet's version of FUD filled trash papers like News of the World, The Daily Mail and so forth. It's written for the terminally stupid, and intelligent discussion is frowned upon and crushed with an iron fist. If you don't agree with Supreme Leader Andrew Orlowski's mad rantings and often nonsensical drivel then you are wrong.
So excuse me if I lol a bit when I hear they've been hacked.
Well no not really, just that Microsoft and Apple have actually been working together publicly (i.e. as this very story demonstrates), and almost certainly also privately. I for example do not think Oracle is in on it too, I think Oracle is a separate entity, attacking Google from a different angle, for different reasons.
I'm not sure what the relevance of Schmidt being on the board of directors a few years ago is to what's happened since. If anything his departure led to a rather public souring of relations between the two companies so could well have even been a catalyst for greater cooperation with Microsoft instead.
In an Apple fanboys worldview, Apple can do no wrong. That's false, get over it.
Good post, nice to see some objectivity for once, that's a very rare thing on Slashdot.
FWIW:
"There is no way to win a round on a single metric. Profit? MS costs are more then 360 development, they need to recover the original xbox sales too "
Microsoft actually managed this about a year back just about, their venture into the console world has now made a net profit. The key driver was XBL subscriptions which have been netting them $1bn of pure profit a year for the last few years because there's relatively very few costs to running the service so it's a massive money spinner.
I agree about MMOs, I think this is really the PC's killer app. You just can't do MMOs well on a PC, or a mobile device for that matter, so I think this will always be somewhere the PC can look to as a safe haven, unless we start seeing consoles with mice and keyboards, but even then when consoles are better suited to the living room than a desk, and MMOs are, IMHO better played a desk I'm not even sure that'd work. I think PCs are in a real safe haven with MMOs.
I think the mobile gaming thing on both tablets and smartphones at least is somewhat overrated. There's been a lot of success selling small simple games people can play on the train etc., but I still see no hope for many long in depth RPGs, FPS games and so forth. Effectively I think mobile gaming creates it's own market, rather than taking from the existing ones. It brings gaming to more places, without taking away from the living room and the desk.
I'm not too concerned that this console generation hurt gaming in terms of innovation and such, on the contrary I think it's done more for it in years- frankly I think the Wii's motion controllers were actually the catalyst for the smartphone revolution. I think it was the realisation that gesture and movement based games could work that really pushed touch smartphone gaming. Also, I think this generation has seen a massive resurgence in indie development, thanks to the likes of Live Arcade and so forth showing that small games can be pretty fucking good, coupled with some excellent indie releases on Steam etc.
Personally, I think the biggest threat to gaming is the whole DLC thing, the fact you now only get half a game, are expected to pay even more for the rest of it, and then when you have, find you can't sell it on second hand to buy other games afterwards. I think that is the biggest downside of the era covering this console generation. It's getting worse each year too- first it was okay, it really was just fair addons for the game, then it became stuff that frankly should've been in the release, then it was to unlock stuff that was already on the disk you paid for, and now in games like CoD it even lists DLC in the map selection in multiplayer and waits for you to select the list map then jumps out and says "Hahaha, fuck you, you need to give us another £10 if you want to play this one".
I've heard this a few times, but I've never seen it emerge in reality. Maybe there's the odd stupid company that does this, but certainly here in the UK at least they're basically non-existent.
I notice in the current job market in fact that most companies aren't even specifying that you need a degree anymore. Companies are actually being pretty flexible on the experience and qualifications front right now- the main thing they're really looking out for is whether you know the skill, or can at least pick it up fairly quickly.
I suspect it's yet another excuse used by poor candidate "Oh they were looking for 3 - 5 years experience". Bullshit. Even if HR put such a silly demand on it's not HR that filters CVs for developer jobs in the vast majority of firms because developers aren't in such huge number that there's 10s or hundreds of CVs for each job. My girlfriend is an area manager for a retail chain and says most jobs for shop floor staff are getting around 200+ CVs per job now, but as a senior developer we only get around 30 CVs per job max, and some of these can be dismissed at first sight. It's easy to filter through these and there's no reason HR would go near them. When technical people filter through the CVs as they do, they're just looking for your ability to do the job, they're pragmatic.
I imagine what you say might be true in the IT support world I suppose where there's far more candidates per job as it's a lesser skilled role so there's more need for arbitrary filtering to make CVs manageable, but absolutely not in software development.
I was going to say, what idiot believes Microsoft is Apple's main competitor now? Microsoft and Apple have been buddy buddy for some years now, both teaming up against Google, which is a shame, because both of them are individually bigger than Google, so could just compete on their merits if they were so inclined.
Apple and Microsoft have long been working together on things like IP strategy and keeping down competitors, it's not suprising to see cooperation in other areas too really.
"No wonder they went from distant 2nd place last gen to last place this gen."
Except they haven't.
They're still a clear 2nd place in terms of consoles sold, a clear first place in terms of games sold, and a near 1st place in terms of total profits (thanks to XBL subscriptions etc.). Even the historically very pro-Sony VGChartz.com accepts that the 360 is still ahead of Microsoft in terms of total units sold.
By what metric that puts them at last place in your world I've no idea, but their strategy has worked.
Still, Slashdot modded you up because you slagged off Microsoft, even though you're completely wrong. So well done on exploiting Slashdot's idiot group think that mods up what they would like to be true, over what is true.
The fact is they have beaten Sony, and they did it again with Kinect, shifting far more units and far more games for it than Sony did Move. Sony is enjoying a resurgence with it's price cut, but whether it'll be enough to shift it over the 360 in terms of units sold before Microsoft releases a new console is anyone's guess, it'd take some doing, but you may be right in a year or so's time by that metric I suppose, but right now, you're still just completely wrong.
Slashdot Mirror
"is that Marx was specifically laying out the communist manifesto for smaller countries (no larger than Germany or the UK) as he did not expect it to be applicable to larger countries like Russia or China."
Well, that, and if you have a dictatorship led elite running the show, then it's not actually really full on communism. I suspect that such regimes built on unaccountable parties who have much more power and possesions than the general population from the outset which inevitably contradicts the goals of communism was part of the problem too.
Actually, by law, in the UK, the service provider does now have an obligation to unlock the device for you. Companies like Vodafone recognise this so explicitly now that you can ask before your contract is even up for an unlock code.
It's really not as clear cut as you think it is. It's a grey area, and I think it's likely a court would side against Valve. Whether the court would have any power to do anything with Valve being based in the US though is a different story I suppose, though few companies would risk isolating any potential business by defying a foreign court.
I'd honestly be surprised even in the US where consumer laws are weaker if Valve had a case tbh, after a quick Google though it seems no one's dared to try and challenge it in court yet though.
Fundamentally though you're applying binary logic (which isn't suprising from people who post on Slashdot- that is after all what the community tends to specialise in) to this discussion, and in law it's much less clear cut. There is much more scope for what is generally deemed to be fair regardless of what contract was or wasn't accepted now. It's no longer simply "You signed it, you live with it". This is of course not always a good thing either though as something so arbitrary as "fairness" can work the other way - a year or two back the dogs trust (or some similar charity) was donated around £2million in one lady's will, however her daughter contested this in court saying she deserved some, and despite the dogs trust having offered to give her a fair share the court awarded against the dogs trust and took the willed money away from them and gave it to the daughter, personally I think in such a scenario that fucking stinks- clearly the deceased wanted the money to go to charity, not the daughter, but there you have it- the point is, for better or worse, it's not all about the contract anymore as you are proclaiming that it is.
"That big license agreement that you agree to before signing up for Steam and before every Steam purchase would disagree."
That fact EULAs can't trump statutory rights, such as the afformentioned Consumer Protection Act would beg to differ.
Your argument is basically that Valve can come and murder you, as long as they put that you grant them this right in their EULA. Well, no, actually, they can't. The user not reading it would not act as a defence.
"The only agreement that they have with regard to the game is the one that you agreed to when you installed it"
Well, and, you know, that matter of the law that governs both you, the end user, and them, as a company. Let's not forget that elephant in the room shall we?
So how does this work where I bought a game such as Dawn of War II as an actual boxed copy but was forced to activate via Steam?
I do not see how it's my problem to believe that this was an actual purchase. Nor do I think for a second that the courts would disagree in fact.
I suspect that you are wrong, that in at least some cases such as this it is Valve's problem, they're just playing fast and loose with the law whilst they can get away with it.
I think you're assuming it's a social issue that can be solved through education, rather than an inherent issue with human psychology.
The fundamental point is that we might in fact well die back somewhat, that is a natural result of every other species that exists when it becomes populated beyond a sustainable point, in fact we've even seen it happen with the human race before. So many wars have been the result of a battle for resources where one group felt desperate enough to risk their lives to acquire greater access to resources to support their ways.
Of course, some humans are capable of stepping above this with enough education, but can we even get everyone to the level of education needed to be capable of being meaningfully introspective and capable of looking at problems more rationally? I'm not convinced we can- education in itself to this level is a limited resource.
Even assuming that you still have the fractious nature of the human race creating a potential for trouble, some people just inherently aren't capable of being rational, they're naturally just too emotionally driven, some are stubborn and can't accept anyone elses opinion- there's no changing that other than to breed them out, and I'm not sure that's a smart idea because their traits are probably inherently useful in other situations instead.
Hmm, definetely not buying anything from Steam ever again. I've never done anything illegal with it nor do I intend to but the idea that they can arbitrarily steal back from you what you have purchased from them is sickening.
What exactly happens when Steam bans your account? Do you lose access to every game you've ever paid for? Do they refund you?
I'd be amazed if it's legal for them to block access to content you've legitimately paid for. Has this been tested thus far?
Yeah, because all Russians have been sat sleeping for the last 20 years and haven't actually produced anything since the fall of the USSR.
Yes. 20 years.
It seems a little odd to assume they've not produced any IP or content worth protecting in 20 years, but somehow had some worth protecting before that. Not to mention that Russia took on all the obligations of the former USSR so is actually just a continuation of that entity albeit with some big changes. The USSR didn't simply vanish out of existence and cease to exist, it morphed rapidly into what we now know as Russia.
You're right about the problem and right that something needs to change.
The problem is how you go about organising and managing that sort of change and the fact is, current governing structures are the best we've managed to implement so far.
Your solution is fantasy, you suggest that if as an individual you figure out "the solution", then you should work to implement that. You seem to miss the point that there's another 6.5bn people out there also trying to implement their ownh, often different and opposing solution, and that when said opposing solutions clash, as they inevitably will, you get stalemate and are back to square one- a point of inaction.
The times I've had the opportunity to introduce FOSS solutions in public sector in the UK the response was resoundingly positive.
The problem is during my time working in public sector there weren't any people like me deciding on the big contracts. The people deciding one larger rollouts were more interested in how hot the sales girl was.
Unfortunately for FOSS, FOSS lobby groups don't send out any hot sales girls to be perved at by 55 yr old men waiting out their last few years for early retirement with a gold plated final salary pension scheme. Most those people in government don't give a shit what the product is, once they've reached that level they're just holding on for an easy retirement and when they're at that point, and they're that apathetic towards their jobs they're just swayed by things that make waiting out those last few years a bit easier- attractive young ladies, invitations to nice places to "examine new technology offerings", free "gifts", that sort of thing.
Public sector is just a game to those people in it at this kind of level, it's a way out of doing a real worthwhile job where there's real actual accountability. It's an easy ride, with a fat payoff if you never actually managed to get a decent wage through actually performing well and being a competent employee as you must in private sector much more of the time.
I never found brand names a barrier to entry in public sector, on the contrary we ended up lumped with some really unheard of, really shit software because the people at those firms knew how to play the public sector game- the quality of their product was irrelevant, a few hot sales girls, a trip to their nice offices coupled with all expenses paid meals at a nice restaurant and some free gifts, that was all that was needed for the contract. Unfortuately the people who actually do the work in public sector are then left to pick up the pieces when said system no one's heard of before inevitably fails.
"You know, the problem with all this cloaking stuff is... we're not fighting wars where it matters."
I don't know why people still parrot this mindset, it's so stupid.
On 10th September 2001 people would've said it's stupid to kit up for a prolonged war against an insurgency, a day later they'd have been wrong.
Britain recently just ditched it's carrier fleet for about 8 years, a few weeks later they find they're needing to launch airstrikes on Tripoli which has meant expensive flights from the UK and Italy requiring mid-air refuelling, and leaving us with a vastly slower reaction time than would otherwise have been possible if we'd kept our carriers.
The fact is you don't know what's going to happen tommorrow- you don't know if North Korea is going to shell the South again, the South is going to respond, and a full blown war is going to start. You don't know if Iran is going to do a nuclear test, and Israel is going to strike it leading to a full blown land war in the middle east. You don't know if Assad is just going to say fuck it, and massacre an entire city of 100,000 like his father slaughtered a city of 40,000 30 years ago forcing a need for intervention.
You just do not know, and that's why it's stupid to buy purely based on what we're doing now, and why it's sensible to plan for what we might be dealing with maybe next week, maybe never, but where the threat still exists and may have to be faced.
The C# language exists separately from the CLR. You don't need a runtime if you have a compiler that compiles C# straight into x86 instructions or whatever.
But what quality of life would we have if the Lib Dems chose to oppose tuition fees, collapse the coalition, and prevent the Tories dealing with our deficit - the largest in the Eurozone IIRC?
I'm not really partisan myself, all parties have some good ideas, and I agree all 3 main parties are shit. But I still think the Lib Dems are the best of a bad bunch if I had to pick an individual party, but for what it's worth I've supported all 3 parties at some point in my life as they've twisted and turned through their policies, and I'm swaying more back towards Labour now also the longer the Lib Dems fail to asser their power.
I'm concerned that the Lib Dems get the blame for tuition fees, when 77% of the country voted against the Lib Dems- how can they be expected to implement their policies with such little support for them at the ballot box? The fact is, more people voted for the Tories, and the increased tuition fees were without a doubt their brainchild so why do people act suprised that we ended up with them?
"The curious thing about calling someone "right wing" is that your accusation can never be wrong. Everyone is "right wing" from someone's perspective. So what information is conveyed? None. It's merely an insult, not a criticism."
You've reached an interesting conclusion, but the problem is you completely missed the point.
You assume that suggesting he was right wing was ever even meant to be a criticism, so jumping to the idea that it was an insult from that flawed premise is absurd.
No, the point of the post I got banned for was to make it clear that Andrew's views align with Murdoch's (i.e. what is commonly accepted to be right wing), I did not suggest there was a problem with him having those right wing views, merely that it was not suprising that his viewpoint aligned so closely to Murdoch's - their political view follows a very similar path, a clearly right wing, for whatever that's worth.
Yet Andrew has thrown his teddy out the pram before, in fact, so did the moderator there Sarah Bee, when others have suggested they and The Register held predominently right wing views- and you see, there's the problem, the only people assuming insult from the suggestion that they are right wing, was themselves, not I, not other commentators, but themselves. They don't like being called right wing, but their viewpoints, fit well under what is commonly accepted to be right wing viewpoints- pro-privatisation, climate change deniers (or whatever the PC term is nowadays) and so forth.
You are however right about one thing- that I think poorly of Orlowski, but it's not for his viewpoint- each to their own. No, it's the inability to reflect on his own views, to accept others opinions, in his view he is right, and anyone else is not simply ignored, but where he has the power, outright silenced.
Worse, you clearly recognise there's a difference between a journalist and a commentator, and I agree about your differentiation between them, the problem is Orlowski has, on numerous occasions, claimed to be a journalist, yet has demonstrably - no, not simply in my opinion, but demonstrably - been wrong on a number of occasions, and rather than accept that, tried to silence those who point it out in response to his articles
It's odd because you (and the GP) are arguing that I'm suggesting people I disagree with aren't worthy of opinion. That's completely wrong, I'm arguing the opposite and pointing out that the problem with Andrew Orlowski is doing precisely what you accuse me of, and that's why he's an idiot- everyone should get their say, even people making a point or demonstrating that Andrew Orlowski is wrong. I'm fine with Andrew Orlowski having his opinion, I have a problem with him censoring counter-opinions and people pointing out flaws in his reasoning or arguments.
I'm saying the media is given a position of power- it is granted, in some cases, the ability to break the law in the case of public good.
With that power should come responsibility- the responsibility to use that shield of being the media to produce factual and informative news.
Publications not doing that should not legally be allowed to class themselves as media, journalists, news sites and so forth.
For what it's worth I don't think there is any value in getting a completely false story- if there was some element of truth then that's interesting, but when a completely false story is given the same weight as a factual story and large elements of the public are misled because they beleive the publication behind the false story is something it isn't - a factual news outlet, then there's a problem.
Your right, your vote wouldn't make it any more likely that you'd get the exact politician you wanted, but it'd mean the politician you did get would have to cater more to your tastes (assuming you're not in an absolute minority group- which is where PR is superior also).
It wouldn't encourage 3 party any more than it'd encourage 5 party, or 2 party. It'd just encourage which ever group can organise to get their politicians to be more representative of the will of the majority of the people which however one cuts it, is still better than FPTP where politicians only have to be representative of a minority.
I do fundamentally agree as I say PR is better, and I do fundamentally agree the benefits of AV are small, but it was still better than the status quo nontheless.
For what it's worth I know the Lib Dems have been a dissapointment too but you seem to be staunchly anti-Lib Dem, may I ask why that is? What would make you specifically single them out over say, Labour, or the Conservatives? I ask because I'm concerned it's another area where people have been blindsided- absolutely the Lib Dems should've stood up for what they believe in more but much of the hatred of them comes down to the whole tuition fees drama, yet the Tories wanted it even higher- £12,000, the Lib Dems got it down proportional to their parliamentary share in the coalition, to £9,000, yet, being an immature party, not used to being in power were stupid enough to let themselves become a scapegoat for what was effectively a Tory policy. Tell me, what is worse, a party wanting £12,000 tuition fees, or a party wanting none, but not getting enough support from the electorate to pursue that policy and being forced to choose between a compromise of £9,000 or an unstable government at a time of massive economic woe?
Perhaps there's another reason you hate them, but this seems to be why most people hate them- again, falling hook line and sinker for the Murdoch media FUD and not looking at it rationally- i.e. seeing what percentage of the vote they got relative to implementation of the policies you want. People seemed to expect them to force through their policies, even when the very same people never took the chance to vote for them.
But anyway, you'll have to excuse me for ranting, I like the person further up this thread am sick of British politics, and am sick of how idiotically gullable our electorate is when it comes to swallowing media FUD.
Why's it a pointless compromise? It's still better than the current system as I pointed out.
On the contrary, having AV would increase the chance of PR because it'd mean MPs would have to be more representative of the people and less representative of vested interests, and vested interests are firmly against PR.
MPs would HAVE to change their politcal stance or they wouldn't get elected- it's that simple, and it's laughable to suggest it could consider tactical voting because that's precisely the problem we have under FPTP- worse in fact, many people have given up even voting at all.
Do you really think we're closer to PR now than ever? seriously? All electoral reform is now completely off the table because people like you fell hook line and sinker for Murdoch and the Tories anti-AV FUD. We can't even talk about PR now because opponents of electoral reform can now point to AV and say look, the people don't want electoral reform. You've handed them exactly what they wanted- decades more entrenchment of FPTP.
A vote against AV was a vote for the status quo, and that's a major problem.
Not really, PR and AV solve two different problems. Either is better than the current system though.
Proportional representation ensures that every vote is equal, and ensures that the result of an election is proportional to the will of the people.
AV doesn't ensure proportionality but it does ensure more balanced representation. Under FPTP (the current system), an MP generally only has to appease 25% - 30% of their electorate to get elected, with the other 70%+ of their electorate being potentially entirely unrepresented. AV makes sure that at least half of every constituency is at least somewhat represented. It forces MPs to be more moderate, such that if you had say a constituency made up of 30% labour, 25% Tory, 15% Lib Dem, 10% BNP, 10% UKIP, 10% other then currently the MP would only have to cater to the will of Labour voters to win, and could then put forward pro-Labour policy against the will of 70% of his constituency in the elction. With AV however he would have to ensure that whilst his strongest lobby was still Labour, he'd at least have to be somewhat supportive of the Tory and Lib Dem voters (or whatever other mix you want) so that their views are heard.
AV wasn't about appeasing Lib Dem MPs and if you think it was then you're a fine example of the type of politically inept idiot that plagues the UK, and one of those idiots who fell hook line and sinker for the FUD.
PR is IMO better than AV, as I'm not a fan of local representatives if I'm honest- I think they're largely pointless. But AV was undoubtedly a massive step up from the current system, and voting against it to hurt the Lib Dems was a classic case of cutting your nose of to spite your face- with AV we'd have a much healthier political system that was far more moderate and far more representative of the will of the people. That's a massive improvement on the current situation where laws are dictated by whatever current ruling minority manages to just break that 30% - 35% support mark.
See my post here:
http://news.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2412564&cid=37307402
Or enjoy reading through things like this, of which Google searches will turn up many:
http://www.edbott.com/weblog/2005/07/andrew-orlowski-is-a-hack/
http://paulfwalsh.com/why-andrew-orlowski-from-the-register-is-a-twat/
http://www.texttechnologies.com/2007/03/26/andrew-orlowski-berners-lee-spam-semantic-web/
http://blogs.computerworld.com/16711/why_andrew_orlowski_is_wrong_about_net_neutrality
http://ktetch.blogspot.com/2011/05/andrew-orlowski-drunk-unethical-or-just.html
But ignoring Andrew Orlowski there's countless issues with their other authors too. Lewis Page is more reasonable in allowing dissenting comment in response to his articles, but his articles are time and time again completely ignorant. He for example often criticises British defence projects citing American options as being much cheaper by pure monetary, but despite having it pointed out to him time and time again he fails to realise that a $10bn UK defence project for say, some new helicopters is still cheaper than buying the helicopters for $8bn from the US, when the UK project brings back $5bn in eventual tax, whereas the $8bn US project it's just money straight out the British economy.
Another example is the Eurofighter typhoons ground attack capabilities- he constantly derides the project because it wont have proper air to ground capabilities until 2020, but he's wrong because it wont have proper bombing capabilities until then- it's had Brimstone missiles added to it throughout this year. He ignores AGMs and focusses on bombing capability and then extrapolates that to say it can't do air to ground at all until 2020. This is complete and utter outright FUD.
He's similarly criticised the armament of Type 45 destroyers, claiming they only have two weapons or similarly, but a quick look on the Royal Navy's own website and the specs of the ships confirmed that yet again, he's completely wrong.
You can see this pattern with most of their staff- their articles are just often outright false. Where they're not false, they completely miss fundamental points. Where they don't miss fundamental points, they just outright lie.
So that's really why they have the reputation- they're just too agenda based. Their writers all vehemently pursue their own political agendas without care for facts, without care for reason, and worst of all- without care for the truth. That's not journalism, that's propaganda.
For me they didn't have any credibility to lose. I posted a response to one of Andrew Orlowski's articles the other week replying to someone that they shouldn't be surprised to see him agreeing with Murdoch as he's always had a historically right wing viewpoint.
That evening I couldn't log in, and every post I'd ever made to The Register had been deleted.
A site whose journalists can't even handle a post made summing up their political ideology in a polite, fair, and well sourced manner is quite comical. The worst part? my post was actually accepted by their moderator and in true Andrew Orlowski style was retroactively moderated away by him a few hours later (along with the account bad, and retroactive deletion of all my posts ever) I don't think Andrew likes it when he has to face intelligent response to his articles. None of their other bloggers... er I mean "journalists" are any more intelligent, although at least the others don't throw a hissy account banning, post deleting fit when someone disagrees with them. Of course, one might argue that it was my previous posts or something that got me a ban, and to an extent that's possibly true- not that I was trolling there, but that I often only posted to correct faults in their stories, to point out potential issues with their reasoning or to offer counter-opinions to their opinion pieces, but their readership seemed to agree with me as I had over 3000 upvotes against 1000 downvotes with even many of those downvotes stemming from engage in fanboy heavy discussions and daring to criticise some pet manufacturer's actions (cell phones, consoles etc.).
Then on top of that it wouldn't be so bad if it weren't for the fact Andrew Orlowski was constantly attacking sites like Wikipedia complaining about the clique there denying dissenting responses, or his complaints about CRU refusing to be transparent and open. None of that would be a problem if it weren't for the fact he himself often outright refuses to let people comment on his articles, and the few times he does, he goes through the already moderated comments and removes those that point out, with evidence, why he is wrong. At that point it's just sheer hypocrisy and any validity in the points he has to make is lost on the fact he needs to sort out his own inability to ensure he follows the facts, and accept that sometimes he may have been wrong before criticising others on it.
It's amusing too, because all I had to do to get round their ban on my account was request a new password, so it seems they're pretty technically inept too. This was made more amusing by the fact I then really did post a few troll comments to wind them up a bit, only to be banned again, to find that yep, I could still reset my password and repeated this for a few days before it got boring. I swear their admin must've been sat their thinking "How does he keep coming back?".
As you say, credibility goes as your customers say it does. Their actions have added me to the long list of people who also believe the site is a joke. The only reason to go there is for comedy - no, not the terribly written articles - I mean BOFH. But even that seems to be rarely produced now.
Really, The Register is like the internet's version of FUD filled trash papers like News of the World, The Daily Mail and so forth. It's written for the terminally stupid, and intelligent discussion is frowned upon and crushed with an iron fist. If you don't agree with Supreme Leader Andrew Orlowski's mad rantings and often nonsensical drivel then you are wrong.
So excuse me if I lol a bit when I hear they've been hacked.
Well no not really, just that Microsoft and Apple have actually been working together publicly (i.e. as this very story demonstrates), and almost certainly also privately. I for example do not think Oracle is in on it too, I think Oracle is a separate entity, attacking Google from a different angle, for different reasons.
I'm not sure what the relevance of Schmidt being on the board of directors a few years ago is to what's happened since. If anything his departure led to a rather public souring of relations between the two companies so could well have even been a catalyst for greater cooperation with Microsoft instead.
In an Apple fanboys worldview, Apple can do no wrong. That's false, get over it.
Good post, nice to see some objectivity for once, that's a very rare thing on Slashdot.
FWIW:
"There is no way to win a round on a single metric. Profit? MS costs are more then 360 development, they need to recover the original xbox sales too "
Microsoft actually managed this about a year back just about, their venture into the console world has now made a net profit. The key driver was XBL subscriptions which have been netting them $1bn of pure profit a year for the last few years because there's relatively very few costs to running the service so it's a massive money spinner.
I agree about MMOs, I think this is really the PC's killer app. You just can't do MMOs well on a PC, or a mobile device for that matter, so I think this will always be somewhere the PC can look to as a safe haven, unless we start seeing consoles with mice and keyboards, but even then when consoles are better suited to the living room than a desk, and MMOs are, IMHO better played a desk I'm not even sure that'd work. I think PCs are in a real safe haven with MMOs.
I think the mobile gaming thing on both tablets and smartphones at least is somewhat overrated. There's been a lot of success selling small simple games people can play on the train etc., but I still see no hope for many long in depth RPGs, FPS games and so forth. Effectively I think mobile gaming creates it's own market, rather than taking from the existing ones. It brings gaming to more places, without taking away from the living room and the desk.
I'm not too concerned that this console generation hurt gaming in terms of innovation and such, on the contrary I think it's done more for it in years- frankly I think the Wii's motion controllers were actually the catalyst for the smartphone revolution. I think it was the realisation that gesture and movement based games could work that really pushed touch smartphone gaming. Also, I think this generation has seen a massive resurgence in indie development, thanks to the likes of Live Arcade and so forth showing that small games can be pretty fucking good, coupled with some excellent indie releases on Steam etc.
Personally, I think the biggest threat to gaming is the whole DLC thing, the fact you now only get half a game, are expected to pay even more for the rest of it, and then when you have, find you can't sell it on second hand to buy other games afterwards. I think that is the biggest downside of the era covering this console generation. It's getting worse each year too- first it was okay, it really was just fair addons for the game, then it became stuff that frankly should've been in the release, then it was to unlock stuff that was already on the disk you paid for, and now in games like CoD it even lists DLC in the map selection in multiplayer and waits for you to select the list map then jumps out and says "Hahaha, fuck you, you need to give us another £10 if you want to play this one".
I've heard this a few times, but I've never seen it emerge in reality. Maybe there's the odd stupid company that does this, but certainly here in the UK at least they're basically non-existent.
I notice in the current job market in fact that most companies aren't even specifying that you need a degree anymore. Companies are actually being pretty flexible on the experience and qualifications front right now- the main thing they're really looking out for is whether you know the skill, or can at least pick it up fairly quickly.
I suspect it's yet another excuse used by poor candidate "Oh they were looking for 3 - 5 years experience". Bullshit. Even if HR put such a silly demand on it's not HR that filters CVs for developer jobs in the vast majority of firms because developers aren't in such huge number that there's 10s or hundreds of CVs for each job. My girlfriend is an area manager for a retail chain and says most jobs for shop floor staff are getting around 200+ CVs per job now, but as a senior developer we only get around 30 CVs per job max, and some of these can be dismissed at first sight. It's easy to filter through these and there's no reason HR would go near them. When technical people filter through the CVs as they do, they're just looking for your ability to do the job, they're pragmatic.
I imagine what you say might be true in the IT support world I suppose where there's far more candidates per job as it's a lesser skilled role so there's more need for arbitrary filtering to make CVs manageable, but absolutely not in software development.
I was going to say, what idiot believes Microsoft is Apple's main competitor now? Microsoft and Apple have been buddy buddy for some years now, both teaming up against Google, which is a shame, because both of them are individually bigger than Google, so could just compete on their merits if they were so inclined.
Apple and Microsoft have long been working together on things like IP strategy and keeping down competitors, it's not suprising to see cooperation in other areas too really.
"No wonder they went from distant 2nd place last gen to last place this gen."
Except they haven't.
They're still a clear 2nd place in terms of consoles sold, a clear first place in terms of games sold, and a near 1st place in terms of total profits (thanks to XBL subscriptions etc.). Even the historically very pro-Sony VGChartz.com accepts that the 360 is still ahead of Microsoft in terms of total units sold.
By what metric that puts them at last place in your world I've no idea, but their strategy has worked.
Still, Slashdot modded you up because you slagged off Microsoft, even though you're completely wrong. So well done on exploiting Slashdot's idiot group think that mods up what they would like to be true, over what is true.
The fact is they have beaten Sony, and they did it again with Kinect, shifting far more units and far more games for it than Sony did Move. Sony is enjoying a resurgence with it's price cut, but whether it'll be enough to shift it over the 360 in terms of units sold before Microsoft releases a new console is anyone's guess, it'd take some doing, but you may be right in a year or so's time by that metric I suppose, but right now, you're still just completely wrong.