What you need is the ability to tie a number to a specific retailer to make multiple purchases with that retailer, but that would be useless with any other retailer. You'd still be open to fraud if someone used your card to make purchases with that one retailer, but it would mitigate potential for fraud to some extent. I wish credit card companies were doing more to give us the tools to make ourselves more secure - I couldn't even find a card (that I'd heard of) that offered the one time use feature when I was shopping around last year (in the UK). I guess they have it set up pretty nicely to shift the onus onto the retailers if there is a fraud, so they probably figure why waste the money offering these features, if it costs our customers X amount of time and hassle to sort things out, well, what are they going to do - go somewhere else for the same level of service?
Besides, maybe if employees were at the sharp end they would speak up about indiscretions in their own departments. I'd be surprised if this was caused by some incompetency in the company's IT department, more likely it was caused by cutting corners. If employees knew their jobs were on the line because some bean counter further up the chain was making "efficiency gains", more people might speak out when they witness negligent practices.
It's also missing the much bigger picture, namely someone will pay for this. Sure, the employee mopping floors didn't know what was happening, but does that somehow make it fairer to push the responsibility onto the customer who bought in good faith? Or onto the poor retailers who are going to get scammed and chargebacks from the credit card companies? If anyone has to pay it should be the company that was in a position to do something about it, not a bunch of third parties who didn't have that option - sure it sucks for the non-related employees but it's still the fairest of the alternatives.
Agree with your main point - any system that relies on users with passwords is breakable by fooling the users - but just to point out the second point, regarding credit cards, is incorrect. You can buy a pre-paid Live Gold account subscription card (it's a scratch off the panel for a code deal, same as their "MS points" cards) and never have to register a credit card. I've had a Live sub since 2006, only used my credit card with it for the first time last year.
There are still good and bad car analogies, though. If you wanted to make an analogy with one person's actions costing another person, how about: this is like the valet service that leaves my car unsecured because it saves them a few seconds when they go to fetch it, never mind that it's an open invitation to thieves (by the way, I'm not saying Sony did leave anything insecure, just trying to put the analogy back on track... oh, wait, that's trains).
That and/or credit card companies need to give us more options to create one time use card numbers, or card numbers that only work with a specific retailer or have limited funds against them. This used to be reasonably commonplace ten years ago but it seems like we've gone backwards in the availability of such features, none of the major card providers seemed to offer anything comparable when I was shopping around last year, which is crazy at a time when everyone is scaremongering about identity theft. Give me the tools I need to protect my security and I'll use them.
Some of us moved to consoles from computers because we were sick of all the messing around and platform and driver inconsistencies and incompatabilities and DRM nonsense and ridiculous install times. With my XBOX, I just drop in a disk and play. I don't spend two days reading forums and tweaking config files. From what I can see, the situation hasn't improved in the 6 years since I gave up on PC gaming (well, all bar Orange box and DoW2) - if anything it's worse, with online only DRM etc (sure the consoles all have DRM, but it's the kind that's largely unobtrusive and doesn't care if I'm connected to the server while playing). I have PCs/laptops/smartphones/whatever for when I need to do something that feels like work, and a console for when I want to do something that feels like play.
They claim that the reason the servers have been down so long is because they're doing just that - they don't want to bring the system back online still vulnerable. Makes you wonder what the issue is that it's taking so long to fix.
Completely agree with you, but it won't stop Sony and the bought-and-paid-for-media shifting the blame. A report on the BBC yesterday already claimed the attack was likely caused by hackers incensed at what happened to Geohot (whereas in fact it sounds more like a determined criminal attack to me, stealing credit card details, etc) yet spectcularly failed to mention the OtherOS debacle that allegedly spurred Geohot on in the first place. The responsibility is always either the users or the hackers, never the multi billion dollar profit machine who have the means to take preventative action.
There's also nothing to indicate why this might be a war. Are there less capable people out there than roles on offer? Hardly. Are they head hunting key players and trying to make them better offers? Possibly, but there's nothing here to indicate that.
I guess Nintendo compete more in this market space - games that rely on gameplay, not graphics, to sell - but even so, they should be able to compete with a $1 game given the much higher production costs. And besides, all the major consoles (and the PC, via Steam) have a platform for delivering cheap games, if Epic can't outsell a $1 game on price, why don't they just sell their game for $1? Either $1 games are profitable or they're not, if they're not then stop worrying about them, they'll die out once the companies behind them realise they can't make money.
Then again, back in the days when games were half the price, the market was a few geeks and the industry wasn't churning over billions per annum. Seems to me economies of scale, even taking into account higher production costs, should mean game prices comparable to what they were, way back when. Having said that, I'm at the point where I don't worry so much about the cost of games, but it's hardly surprising that the average gamer's age is mid thirties, that's probably the sweet point where you're young enough to have bought into gaming in the early days but old enough that you can lay down a reasonable chunk of change per game without too much pain.
It probably depends how you're using it. In a lecture scenario I imagine you can mostly hold it down by your side, or with a crooked arm so it's more comfortable, but if you're using it to actually read or something for an hour you probably quickly start to suffer from gorilla arm.
Still the more I use my tablet the more I begin to wonder how long they will persist, they are good for presenting what I have, not so much for creating on, at least in the business environment
This could be a big deal - it's been said a few times that tablets/smartphones are better for people who consume, while desktops/laptops are better for people who create. I wonder how many of today's creators are only creating because they happened to be in a home with a desktop or laptop because that was previously the only choice for consuming? I wonder, as more homes switch to a consumer only model, whether this will have any impact on our culture in the future.
I don't know, chess has a reputation of being the board game for the intelligentsia. If that were they case why are well known chess masters also not polymaths, CEOs, and world famous research scientists?
Most likely for the same reason professional atheletes aren't usually CEOs in the health industry even though we know sports are a healthy activity - because being "professional" at anything requires a level of dedication and investment of time that generally rules out a full time career. That's not to say there aren't plenty of polymaths, CEOs and research scientists who don't bring a good game of chess to the board.
It teaches prediction and creative thinking. You have a goal but your opponent has the same goal, the idea is to outwit him to achieve your goal. You don't do that following a set script of moves, you have to plan your strategy and anticipate his. Those are incredibly useful skills that can be applied anywhere outside the game. Music is also valuable, but music requires a teacher capable of producing music. Chess only requires a teacher with rudimentary knowledge of the rules (unless you're actually teaching advanced strategy, studying past masters, etc and not just essentially running a mandatory chess club) so is cheaper and much more realistic for most schools (hell, you don't even need teachers who know the rules once a few kids know the rules, they can preside over younger classes for extra credit).
The beauty of Chess is that the basics are not hard, they're incredibly easy to pick up - there are half a dozen pieces with their own moves to remember. The hard part is mastering the strategy, but there's no reason any kid can't pick up the basics in minutes.
Indeed, the BBC is practically a model for this. Add in advertising revenue, the fact that many people still buy in a world where downloading is trivially easy, other associated revenue streams (merchandise, screenings for movies and gigs for musicians) and there's really no reason to a) persecute downloaders and, even worse in my book, b) tie legitimate customers in knots with DRM schemes.
But the GPL is a response to overly restrictive copyright. Most people behind the GPL wouldn't care if it was abolished as a result of abolishing copyright laws, because that's the only reason it was created in the first place - it was the OS community saying "if you want to apply these restrictive laws then you have to apply them equally and this is our shield so that you can't claim copyright over our work while preventing us claiming it over yours". That's like saying if all guns on the planet just disappeared this instant, along with the ability to make more, the people who have to wear bullet proof vests to work would complain that their vests were now redundant, when actually they'd rather be free of the vests they just needed the protection.
It gives them a platform to talk about the real issues. In a world where a lot of the media is controlled by those with interests in clamping down on downloaders, it's this kind of quirky tactic that gets the issues in the news. This has been a pretty big hot topic issue, with laws being bought to reinforce the persecutors around the world, yet when was the last time you saw a major channel/station give serious coverage to the download debate (and by serious coverage I mean airing both sides of the argument, not just listing why downloading is bad)? Here in the UK pretty much everything gets a documentary, yet this very important topic about our cultural heritage gets little or no coverage, and when it is mentioned it's always from the standpoint that "this is wrong", when the actions of a large number of people seem to suggest they feel otherwise.
It's also tarring everyone with the same brush. If I was to say "If a movie exec saw you dying in the gutter and took your wallet would you call him greedy and heartless" the answer is obviously yes, but that doesn't automatically mean every movie exec would react the same way. GP is essentially saying ALL downloaders are greedy, but I suspect the people who hoard are a minority (I also think they have very different reasons to greed for downloading so much - like most people who collect they have a compulsion, but we don't call stamp collectors greedy) and most people download only what they can consume. GP's question is nothing more than a strawman, he's trying to get you to answer the question of whether someone who takes beyond their needs is greedy without answering the bigger question of whether the majority do take beyond their needs.
Indeed, if the logic is that you might have bought the movie if you didn't download it and are therefore liable for a percentage based on this chance, then what else could this apply to? If the shop is busy and you don't want to queue can they go after the retailer for the chance that you would have bought the DVD if they'd had more staff? If a review website tells you the movie sucks can they go after the website owners? When you start allowing damages based on a theoretical premise you open a whole different can of worms. Not to mention, if their argument was "there is X% chance you might have bought this movie had you not downloaded it" the obvious counter argument would be that there's an X% chance you still might - admittedly X is rapidly diminishing as a reaction to being sued...but maybe they can sue their legal team for the difference.
I'd like to get a copy of the ebook with my physical purchase. That makes sense, the book is in a portable format when I need it but in a warm and much more usable format when I'm at home, and I know that it can't be deleted from my library without my permission. Under those circumstances I'd probably buy a reader. I know they're probably terrified I'll sell my physical copy and keep the digital copy, but there's nothing to stop people downloading a digital copy for free already, why not - for once - offer added value to the customer instead of punishing them?
Slashdot Mirror
What you need is the ability to tie a number to a specific retailer to make multiple purchases with that retailer, but that would be useless with any other retailer. You'd still be open to fraud if someone used your card to make purchases with that one retailer, but it would mitigate potential for fraud to some extent. I wish credit card companies were doing more to give us the tools to make ourselves more secure - I couldn't even find a card (that I'd heard of) that offered the one time use feature when I was shopping around last year (in the UK). I guess they have it set up pretty nicely to shift the onus onto the retailers if there is a fraud, so they probably figure why waste the money offering these features, if it costs our customers X amount of time and hassle to sort things out, well, what are they going to do - go somewhere else for the same level of service?
Besides, maybe if employees were at the sharp end they would speak up about indiscretions in their own departments. I'd be surprised if this was caused by some incompetency in the company's IT department, more likely it was caused by cutting corners. If employees knew their jobs were on the line because some bean counter further up the chain was making "efficiency gains", more people might speak out when they witness negligent practices.
It's also missing the much bigger picture, namely someone will pay for this. Sure, the employee mopping floors didn't know what was happening, but does that somehow make it fairer to push the responsibility onto the customer who bought in good faith? Or onto the poor retailers who are going to get scammed and chargebacks from the credit card companies? If anyone has to pay it should be the company that was in a position to do something about it, not a bunch of third parties who didn't have that option - sure it sucks for the non-related employees but it's still the fairest of the alternatives.
Agree with your main point - any system that relies on users with passwords is breakable by fooling the users - but just to point out the second point, regarding credit cards, is incorrect. You can buy a pre-paid Live Gold account subscription card (it's a scratch off the panel for a code deal, same as their "MS points" cards) and never have to register a credit card. I've had a Live sub since 2006, only used my credit card with it for the first time last year.
There are still good and bad car analogies, though. If you wanted to make an analogy with one person's actions costing another person, how about: this is like the valet service that leaves my car unsecured because it saves them a few seconds when they go to fetch it, never mind that it's an open invitation to thieves (by the way, I'm not saying Sony did leave anything insecure, just trying to put the analogy back on track... oh, wait, that's trains).
That and/or credit card companies need to give us more options to create one time use card numbers, or card numbers that only work with a specific retailer or have limited funds against them. This used to be reasonably commonplace ten years ago but it seems like we've gone backwards in the availability of such features, none of the major card providers seemed to offer anything comparable when I was shopping around last year, which is crazy at a time when everyone is scaremongering about identity theft. Give me the tools I need to protect my security and I'll use them.
Some of us moved to consoles from computers because we were sick of all the messing around and platform and driver inconsistencies and incompatabilities and DRM nonsense and ridiculous install times. With my XBOX, I just drop in a disk and play. I don't spend two days reading forums and tweaking config files. From what I can see, the situation hasn't improved in the 6 years since I gave up on PC gaming (well, all bar Orange box and DoW2) - if anything it's worse, with online only DRM etc (sure the consoles all have DRM, but it's the kind that's largely unobtrusive and doesn't care if I'm connected to the server while playing). I have PCs/laptops/smartphones/whatever for when I need to do something that feels like work, and a console for when I want to do something that feels like play.
They claim that the reason the servers have been down so long is because they're doing just that - they don't want to bring the system back online still vulnerable. Makes you wonder what the issue is that it's taking so long to fix.
Completely agree with you, but it won't stop Sony and the bought-and-paid-for-media shifting the blame. A report on the BBC yesterday already claimed the attack was likely caused by hackers incensed at what happened to Geohot (whereas in fact it sounds more like a determined criminal attack to me, stealing credit card details, etc) yet spectcularly failed to mention the OtherOS debacle that allegedly spurred Geohot on in the first place. The responsibility is always either the users or the hackers, never the multi billion dollar profit machine who have the means to take preventative action.
Maybe he's already modded in the thread and therefore has to post AC so as to not invalidate his previous mods.
There's also nothing to indicate why this might be a war. Are there less capable people out there than roles on offer? Hardly. Are they head hunting key players and trying to make them better offers? Possibly, but there's nothing here to indicate that.
I guess Nintendo compete more in this market space - games that rely on gameplay, not graphics, to sell - but even so, they should be able to compete with a $1 game given the much higher production costs. And besides, all the major consoles (and the PC, via Steam) have a platform for delivering cheap games, if Epic can't outsell a $1 game on price, why don't they just sell their game for $1? Either $1 games are profitable or they're not, if they're not then stop worrying about them, they'll die out once the companies behind them realise they can't make money.
Then again, back in the days when games were half the price, the market was a few geeks and the industry wasn't churning over billions per annum. Seems to me economies of scale, even taking into account higher production costs, should mean game prices comparable to what they were, way back when. Having said that, I'm at the point where I don't worry so much about the cost of games, but it's hardly surprising that the average gamer's age is mid thirties, that's probably the sweet point where you're young enough to have bought into gaming in the early days but old enough that you can lay down a reasonable chunk of change per game without too much pain.
It probably depends how you're using it. In a lecture scenario I imagine you can mostly hold it down by your side, or with a crooked arm so it's more comfortable, but if you're using it to actually read or something for an hour you probably quickly start to suffer from gorilla arm.
Still the more I use my tablet the more I begin to wonder how long they will persist, they are good for presenting what I have, not so much for creating on, at least in the business environment
This could be a big deal - it's been said a few times that tablets/smartphones are better for people who consume, while desktops/laptops are better for people who create. I wonder how many of today's creators are only creating because they happened to be in a home with a desktop or laptop because that was previously the only choice for consuming? I wonder, as more homes switch to a consumer only model, whether this will have any impact on our culture in the future.
Don't ever trust a company.
I don't know, chess has a reputation of being the board game for the intelligentsia. If that were they case why are well known chess masters also not polymaths, CEOs, and world famous research scientists?
Most likely for the same reason professional atheletes aren't usually CEOs in the health industry even though we know sports are a healthy activity - because being "professional" at anything requires a level of dedication and investment of time that generally rules out a full time career. That's not to say there aren't plenty of polymaths, CEOs and research scientists who don't bring a good game of chess to the board.
It teaches prediction and creative thinking. You have a goal but your opponent has the same goal, the idea is to outwit him to achieve your goal. You don't do that following a set script of moves, you have to plan your strategy and anticipate his. Those are incredibly useful skills that can be applied anywhere outside the game. Music is also valuable, but music requires a teacher capable of producing music. Chess only requires a teacher with rudimentary knowledge of the rules (unless you're actually teaching advanced strategy, studying past masters, etc and not just essentially running a mandatory chess club) so is cheaper and much more realistic for most schools (hell, you don't even need teachers who know the rules once a few kids know the rules, they can preside over younger classes for extra credit).
The beauty of Chess is that the basics are not hard, they're incredibly easy to pick up - there are half a dozen pieces with their own moves to remember. The hard part is mastering the strategy, but there's no reason any kid can't pick up the basics in minutes.
Indeed, the BBC is practically a model for this. Add in advertising revenue, the fact that many people still buy in a world where downloading is trivially easy, other associated revenue streams (merchandise, screenings for movies and gigs for musicians) and there's really no reason to a) persecute downloaders and, even worse in my book, b) tie legitimate customers in knots with DRM schemes.
But the GPL is a response to overly restrictive copyright. Most people behind the GPL wouldn't care if it was abolished as a result of abolishing copyright laws, because that's the only reason it was created in the first place - it was the OS community saying "if you want to apply these restrictive laws then you have to apply them equally and this is our shield so that you can't claim copyright over our work while preventing us claiming it over yours". That's like saying if all guns on the planet just disappeared this instant, along with the ability to make more, the people who have to wear bullet proof vests to work would complain that their vests were now redundant, when actually they'd rather be free of the vests they just needed the protection.
It gives them a platform to talk about the real issues. In a world where a lot of the media is controlled by those with interests in clamping down on downloaders, it's this kind of quirky tactic that gets the issues in the news. This has been a pretty big hot topic issue, with laws being bought to reinforce the persecutors around the world, yet when was the last time you saw a major channel/station give serious coverage to the download debate (and by serious coverage I mean airing both sides of the argument, not just listing why downloading is bad)? Here in the UK pretty much everything gets a documentary, yet this very important topic about our cultural heritage gets little or no coverage, and when it is mentioned it's always from the standpoint that "this is wrong", when the actions of a large number of people seem to suggest they feel otherwise.
It's also tarring everyone with the same brush. If I was to say "If a movie exec saw you dying in the gutter and took your wallet would you call him greedy and heartless" the answer is obviously yes, but that doesn't automatically mean every movie exec would react the same way. GP is essentially saying ALL downloaders are greedy, but I suspect the people who hoard are a minority (I also think they have very different reasons to greed for downloading so much - like most people who collect they have a compulsion, but we don't call stamp collectors greedy) and most people download only what they can consume. GP's question is nothing more than a strawman, he's trying to get you to answer the question of whether someone who takes beyond their needs is greedy without answering the bigger question of whether the majority do take beyond their needs.
Indeed, if the logic is that you might have bought the movie if you didn't download it and are therefore liable for a percentage based on this chance, then what else could this apply to? If the shop is busy and you don't want to queue can they go after the retailer for the chance that you would have bought the DVD if they'd had more staff? If a review website tells you the movie sucks can they go after the website owners? When you start allowing damages based on a theoretical premise you open a whole different can of worms. Not to mention, if their argument was "there is X% chance you might have bought this movie had you not downloaded it" the obvious counter argument would be that there's an X% chance you still might - admittedly X is rapidly diminishing as a reaction to being sued...but maybe they can sue their legal team for the difference.
I'd like to get a copy of the ebook with my physical purchase. That makes sense, the book is in a portable format when I need it but in a warm and much more usable format when I'm at home, and I know that it can't be deleted from my library without my permission. Under those circumstances I'd probably buy a reader. I know they're probably terrified I'll sell my physical copy and keep the digital copy, but there's nothing to stop people downloading a digital copy for free already, why not - for once - offer added value to the customer instead of punishing them?