But interestingly, the definitions of the word in the dictionary all come back to the definitions "To commit theft". Certainly in the UK (where I am), theft is defined as "The Theft Act 1968 Section1 (1) states that a person is guilty of theft if: he dishonestly appropriates property belonging to another with the intention of permanently depriving the other of it.". Now, taking someone's 'intellectual property' and permanently depriving them of it (i.e removing any ability of them to use that knowledge ever again) would be theft. I'm actually interested to hear where 'personal property' and 'real property' are considered false metonyms. I'm sure in some circles (most likely lawyers) this will be the case. In most other areas of life, they won't be considered false. Law is one interpretation of language, and I'm pretty certain it doesn't trump physics as far as reality goes, and its definitions are somewhat more ephemeral.
While I do bow to your superior knowledge of law (in your own legal arena, which does not necessarily expand past the borders of the country in which you know it; most countries have varying legal systems and precedents/rules), I'd like to point out that most of the people that decry areas of Intellectual Property are effectively saying that "This no longer makes sense and/or is counter productive". RMS is simply trying to put together a view of the spirit of the law, and introduce a measure of fairness, rather than slavish adherence to a technicality of law that can present something in a light beneficial to a very few while absolutely hanging out the larger section of the populace to dry with no recourse.
As another aside, I'm just wondering how long the legal systems of the West can continue with the current arcane and lopsided IP Law, when the emerging world can simply ignore it and advance faster (which is exactly the way the US reached its current technologically advanced state).
Your arguments seem very much like one of the (rightly) derided zealots in tech who simply say "Read the manual. If you don't understand down to the metal, don't use a computer. If you can't understand C, your opinion of how the experience of computing should feel doesn't count.".
While you do make very interesting points there, and certainly make me ponder things again (the point of any good debate), you also lose your audience due to coming off as dismissive and offhanded, which I always found to be a good way to lose a debate (as part of any presentation to the populace at large is factual and part of it is emotional). You state that most laymen misunderstand it, which is why they consider large amounts of the application of it that they see as a bit of a scam. And also state that if you consider it a scam, you're a lummox, or an intentional troll. Don't you consider that just a tad derogatory (and potentially just plain wrong)?
Just semantics, I know, but UBISoft didn't steal anything. They haven't deprived the originators of any use of their CD crack.
I found the article both amusing, intriguing, and irritating in that they're playing the games of the *IAA on the "theft" side.
What they have done is infringe copyright, which is just not playing fair. And for one of the "big boys" in the industry, who definitely do make money from releases, and continued patching (patches are, or should be, costed into the maintenance cycle of any computer product).
Legally, I'd say UBI are in the wring distributing the patch, as it is comprised of code they have not written. However, the cracker group would have to go and press charges to have this settled. And I'm not so sure they would be so happy to drop their facade of anonymity for this (all the companies that would love to know who they are, for the sake of taking a shot at copyright protection circumvention charges etc.).
As things stand, I don't think UBI will get the full legal hot water, however, they've just taken a massive PR hit, and the whole "holier than thou" stance taken by the games industry on copy protection has also been tainted.
As to why a patch has been released that's copied.. The no-cd cracks are widely distributed, so when they're 'mature', you have a very heavily tested patch, that may just fix an issue you need fixed. You can either spend ages getting the dev to identify the bug, work out how to fix it without breaking other things in the product, get a testing department to exhaustively test it to make sure it doesn't break, pass it through QA to make sure it's not affected any other things adversely, and have it passed backwards and forwards if things don't seem quite right.. Or you can grab some existing highly tested in volume code that does the job nicely.
Efficiency says that the second is the best option. However, to do that, they'd need the ok from the crack group, which the organisation probably wouldn't want to attribute on a release document. The joys of politics getting in the way of progress.
Given that they're not willing to attribute or deal with the 'pirates', then alas, their only option should have been to go their own way.
Methinks someone was a tad lazy and thought "it's all closed, who'll know?" without thinking it through.. After all, how does anyone work out how things have altered without going through patches with the proverbial microscope? You can pretty much guarantee that someone would find out the similarities...
Of course, there's also the option that one of the UBI devs is also in the crack group and simply reused the code s/he wrote in the first place, which would be even more interesting (and from an 'unofficial' aspect, probably more useful for UBI, as they can comply with uninformed investors clamoring for DRM, and at the same time slake the appetites of the masses who don't want the damned DVD in the drive as it's a pain in the arse! Best of both worlds).
Hmm.. I worked for an independent label many a year ago. It's not that the larger industry is effective at marketing their best, it's that they're effective at marketing what makes them the most profit.
If you don't sign up, you don't get the deal, and don't get advertising and distribution. If you do sign up, it's on the large label's terms (they get most, if not all, and sometimes all and more from the artist too, to cover 'production costs').
What the recording industry is good at doing is exploiting the wish of people to be famous, and leading them with promises of fame and fortune (by presenting images of the 'successful' pop idols) to sign on the dotted line. Once they do that, they're more often than not pretty screwed.
Methinks the point is that the originally chosen packet size would relate to definite non-P2P packet sizes and general metrics (not making everything look like P2P, which would, as you say, be self defeating). When all P2P traffic becomes obfuscated to the point that it looks to any statistical analysis exactly the same as all the non p2p traffic, then throttling of that stream becomes rather more difficult, as you have to wave your fingers in the air and guess what you're throttling, which will likely upset a large number of your non-p2p using customers who will complain that "the internet is running slowly", and likely have it explained by a friend of a friend somewhere along the way that the slowness is a deliberate move by the provider. At which point a large section of the customer base become actively hostile to the provider. Which in generally considered "Bad PR". In corporate viewpoints, this is a Bad Thing.
The problem with making encrypted P2P traffic look like encrypted other traffic is that it increases the amount of traffic you need to send (padding packets, more frequent transmission, and in general introducing "noise" into the stream to break the fingerprint of a P2P signature in network analysis). To an individual user, this doesn't make too much difference (perhaps a little slower on the download, perhaps not). To an ISP that has to deal with all new versions of P2P apps having this introduced, and subsequently increasing the used bandwidth, the effect is significant in cost. Whatever metric they use will eventually be obfuscated. And if it catches on, it'll eventually be introduced into the clients. And once it comes as the default option, so that the "average joe" doesn't have to worry about knowing how to flick the switches to get the proper download/upload speeds, they'll end up losing that bandwidth, whether or not they stop the throttling (as it'll no longer have any effect). Net result, wasted ISP bandwidth (huge inefficiencies) for the long term because of an attempt to gain selective benefit in the short term. Typical corporate thinking these days. How do we get the fast buck today, and who cares that this may break the company long term.
I'm as jaded about MS as the next person, and always watch carefully where their interests lie before trying to second guess them. This time, I think they may be serious about full ODF support. Without the 'extend' section. The reason I think this is that they're no longer pitching to a set of businesses that can do what the hell they feel like, and ignore the rest of the world. They're now having to play ball with governments. And many governments have been bitten by the 'changing of the format' game in word, where they can't read older documents anymore, thus the rising insistence on being able to reliably and moreover accurately save in a known, documented open way that anyone in 50 years time will be able to build a reader for from the well documented specification if there isn't one available.
If they're to sell to government (a lot of money is at stake here; they need to at least be in the market. If a government can't buy word, quite a few businesses would invest in alternate word processor software to maintain compliance with government and ensure they can pass documents around reliably), they have to abide by the full letter of the spec, and not break it. Governments can be quite uppity when you take liberties with their internal workings.
That doesn't mean that ODF will supplant OOXML in all places though, as I daresay there are things that can be saved in that format that ODF doesn't support. They're just few and far between. But you can guarantee the suits in the businesses will just hear the "Our format does more", and "You can easily make prettier presentations with our software", and the MS suite will still be sold. They'll still have lock in to a level with business (who are far more prone to using the 'shiny' parts of software that are just toys, but require the 'extended format' of OOXML), plus the momentum they have there isn't going to go away anytime soon (IT departments not wanting to support more than one vendor of software for cost reasons).
For purely monetary reasons, I can see the benefit in them toeing the line on a standard. Which is why I think they'll do it and leave it alone (and then use the standard smoke and mirrors to try and get everyone, apart from Governments who insist on it, to completely ignore it). I use both OOO and Office 2007, and honestly, getting full ODF compliance in Word would only make me more likely to use it more often (I currently only use it when I want to make some pretty things very quickly; all the real work is done in OOO).
I've been a sysadmin for ages (started on that track in the early 90s, so a good 15 years already), and can honestly say, I can't be arsed to snoop people. The only time the records are examined is when I'm officially requests to investigate at the behest of the directorate, with agreement of HR and if appropriate, the relevant unions. Part of the reason being that I am too damn curious, except not in the "curtain twitcher" way of spying on people around you. I'm always probing the systems to see if they're happy or not, and seeing if I can tweak them to be more secure, or perform better. I'm also happy with my illusions of them being pleasant, professional people with no hangups or problems (unless they enter the 'mates' category, in which case I either ask, or listen, or both). Saves a lot of friction, and lets me get on with what needs doing. The biggest reason though, is that I think the world should be a better place than it is. I like my privacy, and think it's something valuable. Therefore, I show people the respect I think they should have, and politely decline to riffle through their private information. If I can't meet my responsibility for privacy, I have no business claiming the right. There comes a point where it's asked "Who watches the watchers..".. And I'd have to say they're damn poor watchers if they can't watch themselves. To be a sysadmin in a sizable environment, you need people on your side; you need them to trust you, and have a bit of faith in you.. Otherwise, the first big disaster that happens (and we all know they do, no matter how much you plan), you WILL be strung out to dry by everyone with an axe to grind, rather than having their support and help at the time you need it most.
Back when I was at primary school (in the mid 70s) in the UK, this kind of stuff was rampant. A quick note to all of you guys that say "Well, the bright guys will just teach themselves".. That doesn't work, for exactly the same reason you say the less academically apt (not necessarily less skilled; just their skills aren't academic. Live with that, as I'm less skilled in the non-academic skills than countless others, and I value them as much as they value me). Kids, being kids, haven't seen enough of the world to know what's on offer.
On the reading side, I lucked out in that my folks taught me (read LOTR by the time I was 5 1/2). All the basic Math I picked up on no problems. Then, for the next 4 years in that place, I had to keep reading the 'Peter and Jane' books in big letters. I wasn't allowed to use the time to get my own reading material in at my level. I had to sit in class with this one children's book with a reading age at least 10 years below my abilities, and dutifully trot up to the teacher to demonstrate that I could read this little book, despite many complaints from me (and my folks) that I should be allowed to read my own stuff, or at least have my own book in class. Denied.
Not quite so lucky on the Math.. My father worked late (ran his own business, so couldn't spend loads of time with me), and my mum just wasn't a math person. I learned what I could from what I was introduced to, but had problems working out what the progression was from there. And speed went at the pace of the slowest (no kid left behind). Result of that (which went on right though the years 'till age 11) was that I got private tuition to get me through all the things my school hadn't taught that were subjects on entrance exams for the good schools. I picked it up no problem, but NOBODY had ever previously told me what to look for next. I'd picked up math books myself, but, lacking the theory that was assumed, it was hard to find a book at the right level for me to learn properly. Even the "Academically Inclined" don't teach themselves. They need to be shown, and guided. Encouraged, not held back.
From where I am now. I'm successful, and have done pretty well for myself. However, I know enough to know I'd have been able to better myself even more, if I'd been able to get more of the basics done at an earlier age, giving me a more thorough grounding to spend my later time concentrating on the more advanced topics. And simply saying "I could have taught myself".. Well, in a lot of things, I did.. But it cost time to work out how to do it, where to find the information (pre internet, and honestly, you don't always get the right answer from google), and sometimes, you can just miss whole topics (or misunderstand something that a teacher with the right knowledge could put right in minutes). It's not a disaster, but it's an irritation, to know I could have been better with just a little bit of time and encouragement (or even just the words "You may want to try this book in your own time", rather than the "This is what we teach, and we don't move on until the class is ready").
One size does NOT fit all. Tests are NOT the answer to everything. You CANNOT have everyone with the same academic education. People are different. Education should be about finding someone's talents, and nurturing those talents to the best of the kid's abilities.. For all that I'm pretty good academically (though yes, I do know quite a few that blow me away in that arena), without people doing the non-academic stuff really well, I'd be royally screwed in any job I did. We need all kinds of talents, and they all need to be trained and worked on. Otherwise, China and places like that, where they do compete to try and keep up in every area (so the brightest from each set of talents gravitate upwards faster) will walk all over us in technology and science in the very near future. Have a good look at history, and you'll see the results of that course writ large.
The biggest problem with a service based "Intellectual Property" economy is that ideas migrate faster than industrial base products. Once an idea passes beyond the boundaries of those bound by the IP treaties, it can be refined far faster than it can be in the original treaty bound group. And when it ends up in the hands of an "unbound" country with a good industrial base, then the originator is at a massive disadvantage.
This is the kind of process that set the US on its road to its current place of technological advantage; loose 'idea' protection enabled it to use concepts from the rest of the world, and freely adapt them without intervention from the more tightly bound Europeans. Then it built its Industrial base and had a massive rate of progress plus industry, which proved to be a massive powerhouse.
Then Accountants discovered it was cheaper to send the majority of the Industrial base to separate sovereign countries, crippling the production aspect, and thus the general guaranteed flexibility (although increasing the theoretical, assuming that the world always works in the same way as initial conditions, which currently, it's not).
Not having a physical product anymore, a conceptual one (ideas) is created (to the joy of the legal profession), and tightly restricted. The largest problem with this is that this only applies to countries bound by the treaty (as above), and while putting them at a flexibility disadvantage, allows vastly greater research to be conducted away from this group. Given greater research flexibility, money will eventually drift towards the unrestricted countries as they will simply end up with better tech, which will allow building of their own, more advanced industrial infrastructure (assuming it's not one of the countries currently with the great industrial infrastructure). Not that it'll leave the original treaty members as completely backwards.. Just behind the times, paying more for products designed and constructed abroad, and eventually bound to new treaties of trade that are decidedly one sided against them.
Interestingly, I'm a subscriber to Virgin Cable.. And they throttle the connection down to approximately 100k download, and 8-10k upload during peak times if you've been 'very naughty' (i.e. running downloadx that've grabbed a few hundred meg in the last day). Peak times are between about 8pm and midnight. After that, it opens right up again. Currently, I have the torrents start at about 1am, and stop at 5pm, and nobody bats an eyelid. I don't download music (mainly TV episodes when I've missed one on the TV, Linux ISOs, Open Source software like Open Office etc.), and the day that they turn round and tell me I'm being naughty downloading torrents is the day I turn round and tell them they're being nosy, and that to avoid nosy people, I'm going to take my money to a less objectionable provider that treats me with a little more respect. It'll be sad to lose the email addresses, but hey, I can just email everyone and let them know the new ones.. Hopefully they're a little more clued in than to push this too far. They're having enough trouble fighting Sky services without having people jump ship from their ISP, taking their cable TV and phone revenues with them to the direct competitor. Should that drain really start to happen, I can see them telling the BPI, at the highest level, exactly where they can put their deal. If they don't, it may become a great textbook example of what happens when you let a greedy cartel without any of your interests at heart make your business decisions for you.
And it's a country. Antigua. Considering how even the WTO considers the US is way out of line, and the US refuses to make the reparations, or hold it's end up of the 'fair rules of trade', Antigua currently has a lot of leeway to act as a hub for this kind of thing. And if the US wants to make a trade treaty that'll stick, first they have to open up a lot of markets to Antigua that'll cost billions. So, this bill gets put live, and every site suddenly stops paying their local ISPs and relocates to Antigua inside 24 hours. Net result, no difference to the file sharing, loss of money to US/EU ISPs, and Antigua gets better investment in it's infrastructure. The usual "big stick" the US uses to bully people into submission on this (the WTO) won't bat an eyelid about Antigua doing this.
Fable 1 introduce the concept of the hero falling into a time vortex where you can start the game in a 'normal' family, but end up a hundred years older than your mother, and almost have to chase the final anti-hero round in a zimmer frame.. I wonder what Fable 2 is going to be, some further delving into the theory of Imaginary Time where a new breakthrough in theory is implemented into the game as a demonstration?
Distributing the information on what OS (perhaps even to the patch level), what plugins (again with build version) and even what hardware you have in the box isn't likely to be much of a security risk. If you've tied things down nicely (you do have a firewall up and running don't you, with some other intrusion detection software just in case?) the versions shouldn't make too much of a difference. And if they do, some nice person can point out your flaws. Automated scanners these days will pick up most of the flaws regardless of whether you tell anyone else or not.
The simple way to make sure that someone really, really wants to do the job is simple. You cost up what's likely to be a realistic cost to yourself for allowing someone access to the database. Some of the things to consider are:
1) Who will be accessing the Database, and what level of qualification do they have with Oracle. The answer "We use Microsoft Access to generate queries" is a bad sign. This effectively means 'little to no Oracle experience". Where I work, I point blank say I don't support Access, as half the Access issues used to end up on my desk as reported Server issues, which investigation (taking time) pointed right back at Access. If they don't know SQL enough to be comfortable explaining all the joins and how correlated subqueries work, they don't get to write their own queries (the amount of times I've had to turn round and say to someone "You know, that isn't doing what you think it is." is quite incredible).
2) What is the expected traffic level. If they don't know what kind of queries they're looking at, how many per day they intend to use, and what bandwidth they use, then you let them know that complete ad-hoc usage is very expensive (if you have many customers, you can't afford them ALL to be running round using heavy load queries all day with an arbitrary number of users at the site. That costs in Hardware and support, and someone needs to foot the bill, and you need to make a profit). Work in the cost of extra hardware necessary to fulfill this (with extra support costs etc.).
3) Renegotiation of the Contract for extra staffing levels at your end (and time taken for you). If you agreed that they could have an interface, and you system was designed around that, then by all means, they can have direct access, but it's a change to the terms of the contract, and may mean you'll need extra staff to keep tabs on this (so much more can go wrong with ad-hoc queries that doesn't with well designed interfacing, which needs closer eyes kept on the server, and more debugging time, again, someone has to pay for this, and it's something they want, not you).
4) Standardised process (Dev -> QA -> Live). If they want to run queries on a live server, then they need to have tested the query (either on a 'test' database local to themselves with anonymised data, or on your test database, again with anonymised data), then have it passed by you for sanity checking, then have it able to be run on Live. Again, QA negotiable if they have someone who actually knows how to use Oracle properly, but the Dev phase should be non-negotiable.
5) Enhanced debugging costs. If you find a query they have run that causes issues with your server that need fixing (runaways that don't get reaped, etc.) causing issues to other clients on the server (or even just to them), you have a very high cost for fixing this.
They need to understand they're entering a different ball game by having direct access. They also need to know the ramifications, and that if they screw up, it's not you that'll be carrying the can financially. They need to take responsibility for what they do. If they're good, and have someone qualified to do the job, then for them, it should be quite cheap to have direct access. If they're just thinking it'd be good for a PHB to play with access, or tinker with the data import to Excel without really knowing what's going on, it should be extremely expensive. With the debugging costs, this could be rather expensive anyway. As long as they're aware of that, and are prepared to pay, then sure. Go ahead. But make sure they pay a very realistic figure. Mostly, the figures you arrive at dissuade all the but most deep pocketed 'tinkerers' from playing around, while allowing the people who really can be a boon to you if you manage the relationship well to get extra value from the product. Being sensible about it gives you a good reputation (when I've denied access based on realistic evaluation in the past, and explained this, even though client
So. Your law is you acting on your belief to create a system of acts. Based on belief. But you're merely trying to dissociate the two, saying that the act (obeying the law) is nothing to do with belief. Except without belief, the "law of god" wouldn't exist. In other words, anyone is free to believe internally whatever they want about god. As long as they do nothing to offend this god that they don't believe in, and follow the word of this god to the letter. That, I believe, is a tyranny.
The whole thing comes back to the PC brigade. In it's beginnings, the human rights legislation was a good thing (it pretty much said that putting the white pointy hats on your head, and going round lynching people just because they have a different colour skin is a BAD thing). It was supposed to make sure that everyone got treated equally, irrespective of their religion, or skin, or whatever. However, there are the "political catholics", who felt that they have to feel ever so guilty for the way that history worked, and that they somehow have to make amends. And to do that, they feel they have to make sure that any minority can't be offended (otherwise they're not being made to feel equal). So the legislation grew. And now it's become a very effective tactic if you have a minority anything. If you don't succeed, accuse the person that didn't hire you/told you you were being rude and out of order/whatever else you decide to take offense at of being racist/sexist/offensive to your religion. Then the vast ranks of those that feel they have to feel guilty for history come to bear on the alleged 'offender', with no restrictions, nobody feeling they can gainsay this big bureaucratic behemoth without being branded a Racist/Sexist/whatever. It's effectively the same tactic used by the Spanish Inquisition. They brand you a heretic, and if anyone gainsays them a judgement, then obvously, you're a heretic and need to be tried for heresy. Now, the militant (and the purely grabbing, that have found it's a phenomenal way to get what they want for very little effort) have discovered how to use the system to it's utmost. And now it's a way for a minority to subjugate a majority. The "protected" and "protective" went hand in hand. The more that the 'vocal few' found they could gain by being protective and using the protection available, the more the PC brigade believed they needed protecting, as obviously the poor things were being discriminated against.
I'll add a footnote here: I know quite a few Moslems. And in the majority, they are phenomenally lovely people. Respectful, pleasant, they join in at times like Christmas, because it makes people happy (though obviously they don't partake of the religions ceremony), and they quietly fit in, just being people, and being good people. I also know quite a few that rail constantly about how oppressed they are (a view not shared the the ones just being pleasant and being people; they feel they're right at home! They constantly scream about racism, and demand more resources for support groups exclusively for Moslems. One of the most telling things about the PC brigade I know of is a quote from one of my friends in what I consider the "just trying to be a good person camp" who happens to be Moslem and of Eastern ancestry. "I want to be respected for who I am. When I work my way through life to the good positions, how do I turn round, and have people believe that I am where I am by hard work and ability, when they make positions open at skilled levels that are only for people without white skins? They are robbing me of my own hard work and self respect, and trying to make me a victim. I won't play that game, but will anyone see that, I wonder?".
Still, the world is changing. 30 years ago or so, there was no PC (yes, I remember those days, if a little hazily). 15-20 years ago, PC was the 'trendy thing', and you were a bit of a social pariah if you were very un-PC. 10 years back, you were afraid of saying anything non-PC for fear of being effectively branded a heretic, being held up to a media circus and having your life pretty well ruined. Now, people are asking questions about all the politically correct thought police. Hopefully when the backlash against the extremes of the political correctness of the last 15-20 years strikes, they'll aim for the balance, where everyone does get treated equally, which means standing on your own two feet, and facing the world with your own determination and self respect. If someone hounds you.. It's harassment.. If they hit you, it's assault. If they don't like your religion, tough. They don't have to.
But we won't come to impose our beliefs on you personally. We will come to impose the law of God on your society. Law is about acts, not beliefs. Belief is thought, internal conviction.
Actually, no, you already contradict yourself. You believe there is a god, and from that you extrapolate (without actually being told by god, just someone who said he talked for god, and you trust that the people who wrote it down did so correctly through history also) a given law. That is using that derived law to spread your belief. I don't happen to believe in any god that sends laws, so if you're not spreading belief, then any law you have is invalid, as it springs from a 'god' which I consider imaginary. About as logical as banning the colour green. Now, telling me I'm wrong to believe that there is no god, and forcing me to obey those laws is thought crime (and punishment for not obeying them is a hate crime).
Well done. I actually believe you're trolling here, and not being too subtle about it. Ah well! You have your views, I have mine. Just please, don't in any way, shape or form, try to impose your beliefs, or the 'laws' that stem from that belief on me. I may just have to report it to that Human Rights commission. And if they don't act, then I'll accuse them of violating my Human Rights to be agnostic/atheist. I'm sure the media will love that.
Out of interest, I wonder where they place that information. If it's on the box in big bright letters, then I'm simply not buying. If it's inside the box (or on an EULA click through), then things get more interesting. I'd be likely to buy it if on EULA (using credit card, for insurance purposes), then return it to the store as not fit for purpose. I know most stores don't allow returns, but with the weight of a credit card company behind you, things get more interesting. Personally, I'd relish the fight on something like this; the cost of the game is an irrelevance, but actually forcing either the publisher (EA), or whatever shop I purchased it from (preferably one I'm not too happy with, as it may cause them considerable hassle) to accept a return would be a nice little win. When one person manages to do this, it's a minor irritation to a store, and an unnoticable blip in the publisher's books. When a few thousand people do this, it starts to hit the bottom line (restock at the stores, stores sending the boxes back to the publisher, publisher trying to work out what to do with all the stuff coming back in, and someone having to pay for transportation costs). What they're trying to do with DRM is put all the problems squarely on the purchaser of a game. It doesn't work, then you have to rely on the company to graciously allow you to use what you've paid for. If they don't play ball, you're out of luck. If it stops working by one of their artificial constraints, then again, you have to rely on them being magnanimous. Otherwise, out of luck. Now, if you buy it, say it's unacceptable, and sort out a return via your credit card company, they'll suddenly find that this problem is theirs. We can post online, and grumble, and they still hold the reins. Once the problem becomes theirs, then they really have to do something about it. I believe this kind of thing happened a little with the Windows Tax refunds some people obtained. Maybe it's time to extend that to causing pain for the publishers of games? And before all the obligatory rants come about that I'm pro pirate, and only after the free ride.. I always pay for what I obtain (yes, even the occasional Linux Distro). I just like to have a fair contract. The argument FOR DRM is that it protects them from Copyright Infringement (which is not theft, no matter how it's spun. Legally, and ethically, it's Copyright Infringement. It's not good, and it's not clever, but it's not theft). Now, the "remedy" that is DRM, when it messes up, can cause a perfectly valid game to stop working. Now this DOES deprive someone of something they've paid for, by design. Which interestingly falls square in the middle of the definition of theft. So, when you look at that, the companies are trying to cure something that isn't theft (but perhaps a close cousin) in their attempt to get zero Copyright Infringements by deciding it's ok to have their guardian system steal from a valid purchaser. Behind you 100% that this DRM laden world is unacceptable, and honestly, it's making me cranky enough to actually start doing something to rebel against it properly (not just from the armchair).
The problem with a lot of people doing that is twofold. First, they pay the company for producing a flawed product.. And secondly they open themselves up to copyright infringement (hey, you've paid for the copy with the DRM in there, but you now have a second, that you've NOT paid for), and if perchance the download figures for that copy become available, you can bet that the industry figures will be crowing about how piracy is running rampant.
Personally, I was looking forward to playing Spore. I don't buy many games these days, as I don't have time to play them.. But I buy everything that I consider worth the cash, and that doesn't play me around. Anything with DRM in it like that.. Well, that's a sale that was a guaranteed bit of money in their bank that they've just lost.
Yes, there were elements of Spore that made use of a network connection to make gameplay more fun.. But it wasn't integral to the whole concept. For me, not a problem. I'll just find something else to spend the cash on and entertain myself with. Though I'll probably feel a tad miffed that EA have deprived me of something that I was looking forward to, and give me even more of a negative view of the company than I already have.
The point of rental isn't to hit the target market of the 'full price, pay to own' market. It's there to pick up on all the people who don't consider the product worth the full price, but will pay a far lesser price to have it around for a short period of time (in gaming terms, perhaps the person who'll play a game once over the course of a day, but never again, or have a shot at the beginning, but then finds it boring, so on, so forth).
They were a long way from State of the Art.. I used to subscribe to the old Fanzine of Blakes 7 when it originally ran, and they had a lot of interviews with the Special Effects teams.. And the budget was almost non-existant. I seem to remember that one of the space ships was made from a pair of hair dryers glued together, and then had pieces added on from the old airfix kits, then painted up.. They did miracles with the lack of cash they had.. But the story was what really drove it..
Speaking as a Scuba Diver, these artificial reefs are great. It takes a few years to build up life, but eventually, it becomes a great habitat for a huge variety of life. Even in the early days, you get a lot of 'visitors' as fish start poking round in all the nooks and crannies. Over time, decay does set in, and the 'debris' does come loose. This isn't like street litter though. It tends to stay close to the wreck, and the fragments that are too small tend to rust away rather quickly, or be abraded to a sand. There are reasonably strict regulations on what can be dumped in as an artificial reef (oil, and all the nasty sea life killing stuff is removed first). And as far as studies go, there's a rich history of wrecks, some of which went down without any cleaning whatsoever, and they are invariably colonised quite rapidly by sea life. Empirical evidence is there aplenty. And with the newer reefs, there are many scuba divers frequenting them (and a good portion of scuba divers are very possessive of the environment, as we get to see the real damage done by running roughshod over it).
As I had chats with the speed agencies recently, their rules and regulations about speed limits are a joke. Over in the UK, the requirements are that there need to be 4 serious injuries within 1km of the spot, and that the 85th percentile of the speeds needs to be above the legal limit.
However, statistically, the 85th to 90th percentile are the safest drivers (who drive according to what the road and conditions support at the time). And also, given any arbitrary 2km stretch of road, given time, there will probably be enough serious injuries within that point to justify a camera. The worst part of it is the 85th percentile rule. Now, given in an area where the road does actually support someone travelling at, say, 36 in a 30 limit (there are loads of roads like that), it's encouraged that speed cameras are placed there, as the 85th percentile of traffic speed is above the legal limit.
Now, in places where the 85th (and 90th) percentile are BELOW the speed limit (i.e. in a good, measured opinion of a likely very safe driver, this road is DANGEROUS at the legal limit), it is actually illegal to place a speed camera in the area.
These rulings basically make a cash cow out of the camera scheme, in that they'll capture a lot of safe drivers, doing safe speeds on a road that will safely support them doing just that. They won't actually capture many people driving dangerously fast.
I put that, along with other issues to the safety cam group face to face, and the representatives had to concede my points were entirely valid. Which basically turns their whole safety message on it's head.
Speed cameras are basically following the traditional "Health and Safety" mentality. Don't think for yourself. You can't judge for yourself. Do as we tell you without thinking, and everything will be alright. The biggest threat on the roads is exactly that mentality. You need to be able to judge what the road will really take as safe, not just follow the signs and take that as gospel. Speed limits are arbitrary, and set up to make general control easier (and as a general guideline, I agree with them). But trying to take a generalisation, and force specific compliance in every case is a really dangerous (and stupid) move.
I work in the NHS, and we're required to do two things: 1: Destroy hard drives comprehensively. 2: Ensure that any data on them of a sensitive/clinical nature is kept on a secure backup (in clinical data, for 25 years).
So, yes, destroying hard disks is a common thing. Now destroying DATA.. That's something else altogether. For sensitive government documents, there is no excuse. Destroying the data can be arrived at through two ways:
1: Incompetence of the IT staff (with the amount of change control in a high profile environment such as high government/clinical, you'd have to be REALLY incompetent, and probably picked up way before this). 2: Someone said "This data is embarrassing. Make it go away.".
Slashdot Mirror
But interestingly, the definitions of the word in the dictionary all come back to the definitions "To commit theft".
Certainly in the UK (where I am), theft is defined as "The Theft Act 1968 Section1 (1) states that a person is guilty of theft if: he dishonestly appropriates property belonging to another with the intention of permanently depriving the other of it.".
Now, taking someone's 'intellectual property' and permanently depriving them of it (i.e removing any ability of them to use that knowledge ever again) would be theft.
I'm actually interested to hear where 'personal property' and 'real property' are considered false metonyms. I'm sure in some circles (most likely lawyers) this will be the case. In most other areas of life, they won't be considered false. Law is one interpretation of language, and I'm pretty certain it doesn't trump physics as far as reality goes, and its definitions are somewhat more ephemeral.
While I do bow to your superior knowledge of law (in your own legal arena, which does not necessarily expand past the borders of the country in which you know it; most countries have varying legal systems and precedents/rules), I'd like to point out that most of the people that decry areas of Intellectual Property are effectively saying that "This no longer makes sense and/or is counter productive". RMS is simply trying to put together a view of the spirit of the law, and introduce a measure of fairness, rather than slavish adherence to a technicality of law that can present something in a light beneficial to a very few while absolutely hanging out the larger section of the populace to dry with no recourse.
As another aside, I'm just wondering how long the legal systems of the West can continue with the current arcane and lopsided IP Law, when the emerging world can simply ignore it and advance faster (which is exactly the way the US reached its current technologically advanced state).
Your arguments seem very much like one of the (rightly) derided zealots in tech who simply say "Read the manual. If you don't understand down to the metal, don't use a computer. If you can't understand C, your opinion of how the experience of computing should feel doesn't count.".
While you do make very interesting points there, and certainly make me ponder things again (the point of any good debate), you also lose your audience due to coming off as dismissive and offhanded, which I always found to be a good way to lose a debate (as part of any presentation to the populace at large is factual and part of it is emotional). You state that most laymen misunderstand it, which is why they consider large amounts of the application of it that they see as a bit of a scam. And also state that if you consider it a scam, you're a lummox, or an intentional troll. Don't you consider that just a tad derogatory (and potentially just plain wrong)?
Just semantics, I know, but UBISoft didn't steal anything. They haven't deprived the originators of any use of their CD crack.
I found the article both amusing, intriguing, and irritating in that they're playing the games of the *IAA on the "theft" side.
What they have done is infringe copyright, which is just not playing fair. And for one of the "big boys" in the industry, who definitely do make money from releases, and continued patching (patches are, or should be, costed into the maintenance cycle of any computer product).
Legally, I'd say UBI are in the wring distributing the patch, as it is comprised of code they have not written. However, the cracker group would have to go and press charges to have this settled. And I'm not so sure they would be so happy to drop their facade of anonymity for this (all the companies that would love to know who they are, for the sake of taking a shot at copyright protection circumvention charges etc.).
As things stand, I don't think UBI will get the full legal hot water, however, they've just taken a massive PR hit, and the whole "holier than thou" stance taken by the games industry on copy protection has also been tainted.
As to why a patch has been released that's copied.. The no-cd cracks are widely distributed, so when they're 'mature', you have a very heavily tested patch, that may just fix an issue you need fixed. You can either spend ages getting the dev to identify the bug, work out how to fix it without breaking other things in the product, get a testing department to exhaustively test it to make sure it doesn't break, pass it through QA to make sure it's not affected any other things adversely, and have it passed backwards and forwards if things don't seem quite right.. Or you can grab some existing highly tested in volume code that does the job nicely.
Efficiency says that the second is the best option. However, to do that, they'd need the ok from the crack group, which the organisation probably wouldn't want to attribute on a release document. The joys of politics getting in the way of progress.
Given that they're not willing to attribute or deal with the 'pirates', then alas, their only option should have been to go their own way.
Methinks someone was a tad lazy and thought "it's all closed, who'll know?" without thinking it through.. After all, how does anyone work out how things have altered without going through patches with the proverbial microscope? You can pretty much guarantee that someone would find out the similarities...
Of course, there's also the option that one of the UBI devs is also in the crack group and simply reused the code s/he wrote in the first place, which would be even more interesting (and from an 'unofficial' aspect, probably more useful for UBI, as they can comply with uninformed investors clamoring for DRM, and at the same time slake the appetites of the masses who don't want the damned DVD in the drive as it's a pain in the arse! Best of both worlds).
Hmm.. I worked for an independent label many a year ago. It's not that the larger industry is effective at marketing their best, it's that they're effective at marketing what makes them the most profit.
If you don't sign up, you don't get the deal, and don't get advertising and distribution. If you do sign up, it's on the large label's terms (they get most, if not all, and sometimes all and more from the artist too, to cover 'production costs').
What the recording industry is good at doing is exploiting the wish of people to be famous, and leading them with promises of fame and fortune (by presenting images of the 'successful' pop idols) to sign on the dotted line. Once they do that, they're more often than not pretty screwed.
Methinks the point is that the originally chosen packet size would relate to definite non-P2P packet sizes and general metrics (not making everything look like P2P, which would, as you say, be self defeating). When all P2P traffic becomes obfuscated to the point that it looks to any statistical analysis exactly the same as all the non p2p traffic, then throttling of that stream becomes rather more difficult, as you have to wave your fingers in the air and guess what you're throttling, which will likely upset a large number of your non-p2p using customers who will complain that "the internet is running slowly", and likely have it explained by a friend of a friend somewhere along the way that the slowness is a deliberate move by the provider. At which point a large section of the customer base become actively hostile to the provider. Which in generally considered "Bad PR". In corporate viewpoints, this is a Bad Thing.
The problem with making encrypted P2P traffic look like encrypted other traffic is that it increases the amount of traffic you need to send (padding packets, more frequent transmission, and in general introducing "noise" into the stream to break the fingerprint of a P2P signature in network analysis). To an individual user, this doesn't make too much difference (perhaps a little slower on the download, perhaps not). To an ISP that has to deal with all new versions of P2P apps having this introduced, and subsequently increasing the used bandwidth, the effect is significant in cost. Whatever metric they use will eventually be obfuscated. And if it catches on, it'll eventually be introduced into the clients. And once it comes as the default option, so that the "average joe" doesn't have to worry about knowing how to flick the switches to get the proper download/upload speeds, they'll end up losing that bandwidth, whether or not they stop the throttling (as it'll no longer have any effect). Net result, wasted ISP bandwidth (huge inefficiencies) for the long term because of an attempt to gain selective benefit in the short term. Typical corporate thinking these days. How do we get the fast buck today, and who cares that this may break the company long term.
I'm as jaded about MS as the next person, and always watch carefully where their interests lie before trying to second guess them.
This time, I think they may be serious about full ODF support. Without the 'extend' section.
The reason I think this is that they're no longer pitching to a set of businesses that can do what the hell they feel like, and ignore the rest of the world.
They're now having to play ball with governments. And many governments have been bitten by the 'changing of the format' game in word, where they can't read older documents anymore, thus the rising insistence on being able to reliably and moreover accurately save in a known, documented open way that anyone in 50 years time will be able to build a reader for from the well documented specification if there isn't one available.
If they're to sell to government (a lot of money is at stake here; they need to at least be in the market. If a government can't buy word, quite a few businesses would invest in alternate word processor software to maintain compliance with government and ensure they can pass documents around reliably), they have to abide by the full letter of the spec, and not break it. Governments can be quite uppity when you take liberties with their internal workings.
That doesn't mean that ODF will supplant OOXML in all places though, as I daresay there are things that can be saved in that format that ODF doesn't support. They're just few and far between. But you can guarantee the suits in the businesses will just hear the "Our format does more", and "You can easily make prettier presentations with our software", and the MS suite will still be sold.
They'll still have lock in to a level with business (who are far more prone to using the 'shiny' parts of software that are just toys, but require the 'extended format' of OOXML), plus the momentum they have there isn't going to go away anytime soon (IT departments not wanting to support more than one vendor of software for cost reasons).
For purely monetary reasons, I can see the benefit in them toeing the line on a standard. Which is why I think they'll do it and leave it alone (and then use the standard smoke and mirrors to try and get everyone, apart from Governments who insist on it, to completely ignore it).
I use both OOO and Office 2007, and honestly, getting full ODF compliance in Word would only make me more likely to use it more often (I currently only use it when I want to make some pretty things very quickly; all the real work is done in OOO).
I've been a sysadmin for ages (started on that track in the early 90s, so a good 15 years already), and can honestly say, I can't be arsed to snoop people. The only time the records are examined is when I'm officially requests to investigate at the behest of the directorate, with agreement of HR and if appropriate, the relevant unions.
Part of the reason being that I am too damn curious, except not in the "curtain twitcher" way of spying on people around you. I'm always probing the systems to see if they're happy or not, and seeing if I can tweak them to be more secure, or perform better.
I'm also happy with my illusions of them being pleasant, professional people with no hangups or problems (unless they enter the 'mates' category, in which case I either ask, or listen, or both). Saves a lot of friction, and lets me get on with what needs doing.
The biggest reason though, is that I think the world should be a better place than it is. I like my privacy, and think it's something valuable. Therefore, I show people the respect I think they should have, and politely decline to riffle through their private information. If I can't meet my responsibility for privacy, I have no business claiming the right.
There comes a point where it's asked "Who watches the watchers..".. And I'd have to say they're damn poor watchers if they can't watch themselves.
To be a sysadmin in a sizable environment, you need people on your side; you need them to trust you, and have a bit of faith in you.. Otherwise, the first big disaster that happens (and we all know they do, no matter how much you plan), you WILL be strung out to dry by everyone with an axe to grind, rather than having their support and help at the time you need it most.
Back when I was at primary school (in the mid 70s) in the UK, this kind of stuff was rampant.
A quick note to all of you guys that say "Well, the bright guys will just teach themselves".. That doesn't work, for exactly the same reason you say the less academically apt (not necessarily less skilled; just their skills aren't academic. Live with that, as I'm less skilled in the non-academic skills than countless others, and I value them as much as they value me). Kids, being kids, haven't seen enough of the world to know what's on offer.
On the reading side, I lucked out in that my folks taught me (read LOTR by the time I was 5 1/2). All the basic Math I picked up on no problems. Then, for the next 4 years in that place, I had to keep reading the 'Peter and Jane' books in big letters. I wasn't allowed to use the time to get my own reading material in at my level. I had to sit in class with this one children's book with a reading age at least 10 years below my abilities, and dutifully trot up to the teacher to demonstrate that I could read this little book, despite many complaints from me (and my folks) that I should be allowed to read my own stuff, or at least have my own book in class. Denied.
Not quite so lucky on the Math.. My father worked late (ran his own business, so couldn't spend loads of time with me), and my mum just wasn't a math person. I learned what I could from what I was introduced to, but had problems working out what the progression was from there. And speed went at the pace of the slowest (no kid left behind). Result of that (which went on right though the years 'till age 11) was that I got private tuition to get me through all the things my school hadn't taught that were subjects on entrance exams for the good schools. I picked it up no problem, but NOBODY had ever previously told me what to look for next. I'd picked up math books myself, but, lacking the theory that was assumed, it was hard to find a book at the right level for me to learn properly.
Even the "Academically Inclined" don't teach themselves. They need to be shown, and guided. Encouraged, not held back.
From where I am now. I'm successful, and have done pretty well for myself. However, I know enough to know I'd have been able to better myself even more, if I'd been able to get more of the basics done at an earlier age, giving me a more thorough grounding to spend my later time concentrating on the more advanced topics.
And simply saying "I could have taught myself".. Well, in a lot of things, I did.. But it cost time to work out how to do it, where to find the information (pre internet, and honestly, you don't always get the right answer from google), and sometimes, you can just miss whole topics (or misunderstand something that a teacher with the right knowledge could put right in minutes).
It's not a disaster, but it's an irritation, to know I could have been better with just a little bit of time and encouragement (or even just the words "You may want to try this book in your own time", rather than the "This is what we teach, and we don't move on until the class is ready").
One size does NOT fit all. Tests are NOT the answer to everything. You CANNOT have everyone with the same academic education. People are different. Education should be about finding someone's talents, and nurturing those talents to the best of the kid's abilities.. For all that I'm pretty good academically (though yes, I do know quite a few that blow me away in that arena), without people doing the non-academic stuff really well, I'd be royally screwed in any job I did. We need all kinds of talents, and they all need to be trained and worked on.
Otherwise, China and places like that, where they do compete to try and keep up in every area (so the brightest from each set of talents gravitate upwards faster) will walk all over us in technology and science in the very near future. Have a good look at history, and you'll see the results of that course writ large.
What DRM it uses to keep it from being copied...
Nah, it's tradition to hire people with the business and finance degrees.. You know, the ones that ran Enron, the property markets and so on..
The biggest problem with a service based "Intellectual Property" economy is that ideas migrate faster than industrial base products.
Once an idea passes beyond the boundaries of those bound by the IP treaties, it can be refined far faster than it can be in the original treaty bound group.
And when it ends up in the hands of an "unbound" country with a good industrial base, then the originator is at a massive disadvantage.
This is the kind of process that set the US on its road to its current place of technological advantage; loose 'idea' protection enabled it to use concepts from the rest of the world, and freely adapt them without intervention from the more tightly bound Europeans. Then it built its Industrial base and had a massive rate of progress plus industry, which proved to be a massive powerhouse.
Then Accountants discovered it was cheaper to send the majority of the Industrial base to separate sovereign countries, crippling the production aspect, and thus the general guaranteed flexibility (although increasing the theoretical, assuming that the world always works in the same way as initial conditions, which currently, it's not).
Not having a physical product anymore, a conceptual one (ideas) is created (to the joy of the legal profession), and tightly restricted. The largest problem with this is that this only applies to countries bound by the treaty (as above), and while putting them at a flexibility disadvantage, allows vastly greater research to be conducted away from this group. Given greater research flexibility, money will eventually drift towards the unrestricted countries as they will simply end up with better tech, which will allow building of their own, more advanced industrial infrastructure (assuming it's not one of the countries currently with the great industrial infrastructure).
Not that it'll leave the original treaty members as completely backwards.. Just behind the times, paying more for products designed and constructed abroad, and eventually bound to new treaties of trade that are decidedly one sided against them.
Interestingly, I'm a subscriber to Virgin Cable.. And they throttle the connection down to approximately 100k download, and 8-10k upload during peak times if you've been 'very naughty' (i.e. running downloadx that've grabbed a few hundred meg in the last day). Peak times are between about 8pm and midnight. After that, it opens right up again.
Currently, I have the torrents start at about 1am, and stop at 5pm, and nobody bats an eyelid.
I don't download music (mainly TV episodes when I've missed one on the TV, Linux ISOs, Open Source software like Open Office etc.), and the day that they turn round and tell me I'm being naughty downloading torrents is the day I turn round and tell them they're being nosy, and that to avoid nosy people, I'm going to take my money to a less objectionable provider that treats me with a little more respect.
It'll be sad to lose the email addresses, but hey, I can just email everyone and let them know the new ones..
Hopefully they're a little more clued in than to push this too far. They're having enough trouble fighting Sky services without having people jump ship from their ISP, taking their cable TV and phone revenues with them to the direct competitor. Should that drain really start to happen, I can see them telling the BPI, at the highest level, exactly where they can put their deal.
If they don't, it may become a great textbook example of what happens when you let a greedy cartel without any of your interests at heart make your business decisions for you.
And it's a country.
Antigua.
Considering how even the WTO considers the US is way out of line, and the US refuses to make the reparations, or hold it's end up of the 'fair rules of trade', Antigua currently has a lot of leeway to act as a hub for this kind of thing. And if the US wants to make a trade treaty that'll stick, first they have to open up a lot of markets to Antigua that'll cost billions.
So, this bill gets put live, and every site suddenly stops paying their local ISPs and relocates to Antigua inside 24 hours.
Net result, no difference to the file sharing, loss of money to US/EU ISPs, and Antigua gets better investment in it's infrastructure.
The usual "big stick" the US uses to bully people into submission on this (the WTO) won't bat an eyelid about Antigua doing this.
Fable 1 introduce the concept of the hero falling into a time vortex where you can start the game in a 'normal' family, but end up a hundred years older than your mother, and almost have to chase the final anti-hero round in a zimmer frame..
I wonder what Fable 2 is going to be, some further delving into the theory of Imaginary Time where a new breakthrough in theory is implemented into the game as a demonstration?
Distributing the information on what OS (perhaps even to the patch level), what plugins (again with build version) and even what hardware you have in the box isn't likely to be much of a security risk. If you've tied things down nicely (you do have a firewall up and running don't you, with some other intrusion detection software just in case?) the versions shouldn't make too much of a difference. And if they do, some nice person can point out your flaws.
Automated scanners these days will pick up most of the flaws regardless of whether you tell anyone else or not.
The simple way to make sure that someone really, really wants to do the job is simple.
You cost up what's likely to be a realistic cost to yourself for allowing someone access to the database.
Some of the things to consider are:
1) Who will be accessing the Database, and what level of qualification do they have with Oracle. The answer "We use Microsoft Access to generate queries" is a bad sign. This effectively means 'little to no Oracle experience". Where I work, I point blank say I don't support Access, as half the Access issues used to end up on my desk as reported Server issues, which investigation (taking time) pointed right back at Access.
If they don't know SQL enough to be comfortable explaining all the joins and how correlated subqueries work, they don't get to write their own queries (the amount of times I've had to turn round and say to someone
"You know, that isn't doing what you think it is." is quite incredible).
2) What is the expected traffic level. If they don't know what kind of queries they're looking at, how many per day they intend to use, and what bandwidth they use, then you let them know that complete ad-hoc usage is very expensive (if you have many customers, you can't afford them ALL to be running round using heavy load queries all day with an arbitrary number of users at the site. That costs in Hardware and support, and someone needs to foot the bill, and you need to make a profit).
Work in the cost of extra hardware necessary to fulfill this (with extra support costs etc.).
3) Renegotiation of the Contract for extra staffing levels at your end (and time taken for you). If you agreed that they could have an interface, and you system was designed around that, then by all means, they can have direct access, but it's a change to the terms of the contract, and may mean you'll need extra staff to keep tabs on this (so much more can go wrong with ad-hoc queries that doesn't with well designed interfacing, which needs closer eyes kept on the server, and more debugging time, again, someone has to pay for this, and it's something they want, not you).
4) Standardised process (Dev -> QA -> Live). If they want to run queries on a live server, then they need to have tested the query (either on a 'test' database local to themselves with anonymised data, or on your test database, again with anonymised data), then have it passed by you for sanity checking, then have it able to be run on Live. Again, QA negotiable if they have someone who actually knows how to use Oracle properly, but the Dev phase should be non-negotiable.
5) Enhanced debugging costs. If you find a query they have run that causes issues with your server that need fixing (runaways that don't get reaped, etc.) causing issues to other clients on the server (or even just to them), you have a very high cost for fixing this.
They need to understand they're entering a different ball game by having direct access. They also need to know the ramifications, and that if they screw up, it's not you that'll be carrying the can financially. They need to take responsibility for what they do. If they're good, and have someone qualified to do the job, then for them, it should be quite cheap to have direct access.
If they're just thinking it'd be good for a PHB to play with access, or tinker with the data import to Excel without really knowing what's going on, it should be extremely expensive.
With the debugging costs, this could be rather expensive anyway. As long as they're aware of that, and are prepared to pay, then sure. Go ahead. But make sure they pay a very realistic figure.
Mostly, the figures you arrive at dissuade all the but most deep pocketed 'tinkerers' from playing around, while allowing the people who really can be a boon to you if you manage the relationship well to get extra value from the product.
Being sensible about it gives you a good reputation (when I've denied access based on realistic evaluation in the past, and explained this, even though client
So. Your law is you acting on your belief to create a system of acts. Based on belief. But you're merely trying to dissociate the two, saying that the act (obeying the law) is nothing to do with belief.
Except without belief, the "law of god" wouldn't exist.
In other words, anyone is free to believe internally whatever they want about god. As long as they do nothing to offend this god that they don't believe in, and follow the word of this god to the letter.
That, I believe, is a tyranny.
The whole thing comes back to the PC brigade.
In it's beginnings, the human rights legislation was a good thing (it pretty much said that putting the white pointy hats on your head, and going round lynching people just because they have a different colour skin is a BAD thing). It was supposed to make sure that everyone got treated equally, irrespective of their religion, or skin, or whatever.
However, there are the "political catholics", who felt that they have to feel ever so guilty for the way that history worked, and that they somehow have to make amends. And to do that, they feel they have to make sure that any minority can't be offended (otherwise they're not being made to feel equal). So the legislation grew. And now it's become a very effective tactic if you have a minority anything. If you don't succeed, accuse the person that didn't hire you/told you you were being rude and out of order/whatever else you decide to take offense at of being racist/sexist/offensive to your religion.
Then the vast ranks of those that feel they have to feel guilty for history come to bear on the alleged 'offender', with no restrictions, nobody feeling they can gainsay this big bureaucratic behemoth without being branded a Racist/Sexist/whatever.
It's effectively the same tactic used by the Spanish Inquisition. They brand you a heretic, and if anyone gainsays them a judgement, then obvously, you're a heretic and need to be tried for heresy.
Now, the militant (and the purely grabbing, that have found it's a phenomenal way to get what they want for very little effort) have discovered how to use the system to it's utmost. And now it's a way for a minority to subjugate a majority.
The "protected" and "protective" went hand in hand. The more that the 'vocal few' found they could gain by being protective and using the protection available, the more the PC brigade believed they needed protecting, as obviously the poor things were being discriminated against.
I'll add a footnote here: I know quite a few Moslems. And in the majority, they are phenomenally lovely people. Respectful, pleasant, they join in at times like Christmas, because it makes people happy (though obviously they don't partake of the religions ceremony), and they quietly fit in, just being people, and being good people.
I also know quite a few that rail constantly about how oppressed they are (a view not shared the the ones just being pleasant and being people; they feel they're right at home! They constantly scream about racism, and demand more resources for support groups exclusively for Moslems.
One of the most telling things about the PC brigade I know of is a quote from one of my friends in what I consider the "just trying to be a good person camp" who happens to be Moslem and of Eastern ancestry.
"I want to be respected for who I am. When I work my way through life to the good positions, how do I turn round, and have people believe that I am where I am by hard work and ability, when they make positions open at skilled levels that are only for people without white skins? They are robbing me of my own hard work and self respect, and trying to make me a victim. I won't play that game, but will anyone see that, I wonder?".
Still, the world is changing. 30 years ago or so, there was no PC (yes, I remember those days, if a little hazily). 15-20 years ago, PC was the 'trendy thing', and you were a bit of a social pariah if you were very un-PC. 10 years back, you were afraid of saying anything non-PC for fear of being effectively branded a heretic, being held up to a media circus and having your life pretty well ruined.
Now, people are asking questions about all the politically correct thought police. Hopefully when the backlash against the extremes of the political correctness of the last 15-20 years strikes, they'll aim for the balance, where everyone does get treated equally, which means standing on your own two feet, and facing the world with your own determination and self respect. If someone hounds you.. It's harassment.. If they hit you, it's assault. If they don't like your religion, tough. They don't have to.
But we won't come to impose our beliefs on you personally. We will come to impose the law of God on your society. Law is about acts, not beliefs. Belief is thought, internal conviction.
Actually, no, you already contradict yourself. You believe there is a god, and from that you extrapolate (without actually being told by god, just someone who said he talked for god, and you trust that the people who wrote it down did so correctly through history also) a given law.
That is using that derived law to spread your belief. I don't happen to believe in any god that sends laws, so if you're not spreading belief, then any law you have is invalid, as it springs from a 'god' which I consider imaginary. About as logical as banning the colour green. Now, telling me I'm wrong to believe that there is no god, and forcing me to obey those laws is thought crime (and punishment for not obeying them is a hate crime).
Well done. I actually believe you're trolling here, and not being too subtle about it. Ah well! You have your views, I have mine. Just please, don't in any way, shape or form, try to impose your beliefs, or the 'laws' that stem from that belief on me. I may just have to report it to that Human Rights commission. And if they don't act, then I'll accuse them of violating my Human Rights to be agnostic/atheist. I'm sure the media will love that.
Out of interest, I wonder where they place that information.
If it's on the box in big bright letters, then I'm simply not buying.
If it's inside the box (or on an EULA click through), then things get more interesting.
I'd be likely to buy it if on EULA (using credit card, for insurance purposes), then return it to the store as not fit for purpose. I know most stores don't allow returns, but with the weight of a credit card company behind you, things get more interesting.
Personally, I'd relish the fight on something like this; the cost of the game is an irrelevance, but actually forcing either the publisher (EA), or whatever shop I purchased it from (preferably one I'm not too happy with, as it may cause them considerable hassle) to accept a return would be a nice little win.
When one person manages to do this, it's a minor irritation to a store, and an unnoticable blip in the publisher's books.
When a few thousand people do this, it starts to hit the bottom line (restock at the stores, stores sending the boxes back to the publisher, publisher trying to work out what to do with all the stuff coming back in, and someone having to pay for transportation costs).
What they're trying to do with DRM is put all the problems squarely on the purchaser of a game. It doesn't work, then you have to rely on the company to graciously allow you to use what you've paid for. If they don't play ball, you're out of luck. If it stops working by one of their artificial constraints, then again, you have to rely on them being magnanimous. Otherwise, out of luck.
Now, if you buy it, say it's unacceptable, and sort out a return via your credit card company, they'll suddenly find that this problem is theirs.
We can post online, and grumble, and they still hold the reins. Once the problem becomes theirs, then they really have to do something about it.
I believe this kind of thing happened a little with the Windows Tax refunds some people obtained. Maybe it's time to extend that to causing pain for the publishers of games?
And before all the obligatory rants come about that I'm pro pirate, and only after the free ride.. I always pay for what I obtain (yes, even the occasional Linux Distro). I just like to have a fair contract.
The argument FOR DRM is that it protects them from Copyright Infringement (which is not theft, no matter how it's spun. Legally, and ethically, it's Copyright Infringement. It's not good, and it's not clever, but it's not theft). Now, the "remedy" that is DRM, when it messes up, can cause a perfectly valid game to stop working.
Now this DOES deprive someone of something they've paid for, by design. Which interestingly falls square in the middle of the definition of theft.
So, when you look at that, the companies are trying to cure something that isn't theft (but perhaps a close cousin) in their attempt to get zero Copyright Infringements by deciding it's ok to have their guardian system steal from a valid purchaser.
Behind you 100% that this DRM laden world is unacceptable, and honestly, it's making me cranky enough to actually start doing something to rebel against it properly (not just from the armchair).
The problem with a lot of people doing that is twofold. First, they pay the company for producing a flawed product.. And secondly they open themselves up to copyright infringement (hey, you've paid for the copy with the DRM in there, but you now have a second, that you've NOT paid for), and if perchance the download figures for that copy become available, you can bet that the industry figures will be crowing about how piracy is running rampant.
Personally, I was looking forward to playing Spore. I don't buy many games these days, as I don't have time to play them.. But I buy everything that I consider worth the cash, and that doesn't play me around.
Anything with DRM in it like that.. Well, that's a sale that was a guaranteed bit of money in their bank that they've just lost.
Yes, there were elements of Spore that made use of a network connection to make gameplay more fun.. But it wasn't integral to the whole concept.
For me, not a problem. I'll just find something else to spend the cash on and entertain myself with. Though I'll probably feel a tad miffed that EA have deprived me of something that I was looking forward to, and give me even more of a negative view of the company than I already have.
The point of rental isn't to hit the target market of the 'full price, pay to own' market. It's there to pick up on all the people who don't consider the product worth the full price, but will pay a far lesser price to have it around for a short period of time (in gaming terms, perhaps the person who'll play a game once over the course of a day, but never again, or have a shot at the beginning, but then finds it boring, so on, so forth).
They were a long way from State of the Art.. I used to subscribe to the old Fanzine of Blakes 7 when it originally ran, and they had a lot of interviews with the Special Effects teams.. And the budget was almost non-existant. I seem to remember that one of the space ships was made from a pair of hair dryers glued together, and then had pieces added on from the old airfix kits, then painted up..
They did miracles with the lack of cash they had.. But the story was what really drove it..
Speaking as a Scuba Diver, these artificial reefs are great. It takes a few years to build up life, but eventually, it becomes a great habitat for a huge variety of life. Even in the early days, you get a lot of 'visitors' as fish start poking round in all the nooks and crannies.
Over time, decay does set in, and the 'debris' does come loose. This isn't like street litter though. It tends to stay close to the wreck, and the fragments that are too small tend to rust away rather quickly, or be abraded to a sand.
There are reasonably strict regulations on what can be dumped in as an artificial reef (oil, and all the nasty sea life killing stuff is removed first). And as far as studies go, there's a rich history of wrecks, some of which went down without any cleaning whatsoever, and they are invariably colonised quite rapidly by sea life. Empirical evidence is there aplenty. And with the newer reefs, there are many scuba divers frequenting them (and a good portion of scuba divers are very possessive of the environment, as we get to see the real damage done by running roughshod over it).
As I had chats with the speed agencies recently, their rules and regulations about speed limits are a joke.
Over in the UK, the requirements are that there need to be 4 serious injuries within 1km of the spot, and that the 85th percentile of the speeds needs to be above the legal limit.
However, statistically, the 85th to 90th percentile are the safest drivers (who drive according to what the road and conditions support at the time).
And also, given any arbitrary 2km stretch of road, given time, there will probably be enough serious injuries within that point to justify a camera.
The worst part of it is the 85th percentile rule. Now, given in an area where the road does actually support someone travelling at, say, 36 in a 30 limit (there are loads of roads like that), it's encouraged that speed cameras are placed there, as the 85th percentile of traffic speed is above the legal limit.
Now, in places where the 85th (and 90th) percentile are BELOW the speed limit (i.e. in a good, measured opinion of a likely very safe driver, this road is DANGEROUS at the legal limit), it is actually illegal to place a speed camera in the area.
These rulings basically make a cash cow out of the camera scheme, in that they'll capture a lot of safe drivers, doing safe speeds on a road that will safely support them doing just that.
They won't actually capture many people driving dangerously fast.
I put that, along with other issues to the safety cam group face to face, and the representatives had to concede my points were entirely valid. Which basically turns their whole safety message on it's head.
Speed cameras are basically following the traditional "Health and Safety" mentality. Don't think for yourself. You can't judge for yourself. Do as we tell you without thinking, and everything will be alright.
The biggest threat on the roads is exactly that mentality. You need to be able to judge what the road will really take as safe, not just follow the signs and take that as gospel. Speed limits are arbitrary, and set up to make general control easier (and as a general guideline, I agree with them). But trying to take a generalisation, and force specific compliance in every case is a really dangerous (and stupid) move.
I work in the NHS, and we're required to do two things:
1: Destroy hard drives comprehensively.
2: Ensure that any data on them of a sensitive/clinical nature is kept on a secure backup (in clinical data, for 25 years).
So, yes, destroying hard disks is a common thing. Now destroying DATA.. That's something else altogether.
For sensitive government documents, there is no excuse. Destroying the data can be arrived at through two ways:
1: Incompetence of the IT staff (with the amount of change control in a high profile environment such as high government/clinical, you'd have to be REALLY incompetent, and probably picked up way before this).
2: Someone said "This data is embarrassing. Make it go away.".
I'd say 2 was the most probable.