It's a shame they haven't tried a similar strategy with other EA games like SimCity, instead choosing to lock the game up tighter than Han Solo trapped in carbonite with an always-online requirement nobody wants.
Umm... I hated just about everything they put out about Sim City, especially the online-only DRM and the social aspects of it but... You can't really say that what happened here with SWTOR is the solution to Sim City's woes.
All SWTOR did was remove the money investment that people needed, both in buying it and the monthly subscription. Nobody was complaining about Sim City's cost (aside from the people angry that PC games are costing $60, which was only that price for console games because of the massive license fee they pay to console makers), and it had no subscription.
In fact, SWTOR still has "online-only" requirements, and unlike Sim City a lot of the game's calculations are done on servers. In addition, it is arbitrarily locking up a LOT of content behind their "optional" monthly subscription pay wall, meaning that free loaders can't even use it as much as they can or get the same items, unlike in Sim City which, after its initial investment everything is available.
Long story short, I am not trying to defend Sim City's horrible choices. All I am saying is that F2P makes sense in situations, but what going F2P changed in this case would not apply to fix what was wrong with Sim City.
Ok, not quite vigilanteism, I really meant just let people go about their lives, filming events to keep for their records. Eventually, someone will accidentally get bits and pieces here and there of people, such as a video of the finish line with in the distance a guy dropping a bag and walking away. in another video, the same guy is walking with the bag, and they get the face.
I'm not at all asking people to now film things and pan the cameras to try to capture everyone doing everything in case later something happens and provide it to police, but I see how what I said could be interpreted that way.
And yeah, this fascination corporations seem to have with monitoring us disturbs me. They may do it to get our reactions to an ad, so they can better try to brainwash us into buying their products even if we didn't want it and ignore it (thank you Axe bodyspray, but please go the f*** away). And how the government is, via acts like CISPA, is simply demanding companies who gather this info for their own records now pass it to the government for uses we CERTAINLY did not authorize when we signed up for that Netflix account.
They need to crowdsource law enforcement. I'm sure if they requested politely from civilians that were there to give up the phones (temporarily) to access videos and pictures people took, they could have identified the victims just as if we had governmental cameras watching our every move.
The difference? With civilians incidentally filming me, I know they won't watch my every move as it happens to ensure I'm not breaking some silly law that nobody follows (jaywalking in suburban areas), aren't freaking out because I look middle eastern (well, some may), and won't keep the footage once there was no attack.
I'm fine being caught on random film because I know I'm too ugly for anyone to want to keep a picture of, and aren't keeping it (like the government may) to watch my every move.
Isn't this normal? Most big companies don't trust their employees not to goof off or use facebook, so block all internet access. Accessing personal emails seems like a normal deal to me (if being real strict jerks to their employees) and a company has every right.
Heck, I've worked at 4 jobs in my life, one which had no computers, two blocked everything but the intranet or the company website, and one that let me use the internet at will (which I.... promptly abused, watching a few too many cat videos on youtube).
And, well, even good computer users can be tripped up and introduce a virus. If a virus wants to get in, it will, and only staying off the internet is a good way to prevent a virus 100% of the time.
*Scene - Daycare center, full of crying 6 year olds*
6 YO 1: Wahh, I don't like Barnie, I wanna watch Teletubbies!
6 YO 2: The big scary purple dinosaur scares me! Waaa!
*Enter OOTB stage right, furious*
Hey, babies, if you don't like the show, LEAVE! I don't understand why you are sticking around in this childish environment!
*Looking satisfied with himself, OOTB strides pridefully out of the room. The babies look at eachother, realize he is right, instantly grow out of it, and demand the TV be changed over to Game of Thrones*
I started work interning for a software company, who makes programs designed to help a central force (IT) manage up to thousands of computers. It can send software updates, or re-image computers entirely from backups, including all kinds of alterations to the hard drive structure. Specifically, I worked on the imaging part of the program.
On that program, you can choose to image an entire drive, or image a specific partition. You can then re-deliver the image to that computer (or any other, for that matter) by, say, taking a single partition of a couple on a drive and making it the ONLY partition on the drive. One such use of this would be to remove the 5GB recovery partition some pre-built computers come with (or add it back in).
The way the company does this is it essentially copies every single file off into a single folder-type file (.img), wipes the drive of its contents, then rebuilds the partition table to have the right number and then copies it back in.
This massive waste of space (having up to the entirety of the old drive minus the small partition) copied to another computer while you wipe it seemed like a waste to me. I asked the developer of the program if it was possible to simply go into the small part of the drive where it says the partition 1 goes from, say, block 0 to block 65000 and partition 2 goes from block 65000 to 69000 and just make part 1 go all the way across. You can leave the data as it is, just change where you are allowed to store files.
No, he said. Someone already patented it. A big corporation has the patent on being able to rewrite the partition table to delete or add partitions at will, so no other company can develop it themselves. I, not even a programmer, had figured out the simple steps to do it, yet if we were to implement said technique, we'd get sued because we couldn't PROVE we independently developed such technology. We couldn't PROVE that we didn't just copy their code. We couldn't PROVE that we weren't "inspired" by their hard work and the patent they made.
And so, we have to do 2+ hours of work for a single computer, tied up gigabytes of information, just because I didn't think of the idea first. I didn't KNOW I wasn't first, or that someone else did it, or how they did it, but that doesn't matter. Just like in copyright, even though YOU can do all the work yourself (making a remix isn't as simple as copying someone's mp3 and posting it on the internet), you are not allowed to profit from the work you did on something.
I understand your point, but while guns are designed to kill people, it is still up to the end user who voluntarily purchased the item to use it in a responsible fashion. To use another product... Ornamental swords and various "ninja items". Throughout time they had been used to more easily kill other people, yet you shouldn't blame the sword maker if someone buys it and uses it against people.
Guns come with all kinds of safety measures. By themselves, they cannot injure anyone (fingers caught in the action not counting), and must take an additional step of purchasing another item and loading it into the device. As well, most guns come with safety catches, some with multiple (grip safety, trigger safety, etc) to try to minimize accidents as much as possible.
Not to mention the many MANY warnings in the manual stating to never point a device at another person (which means they intend these devices for other than killing, such as for entertainment at a shooting range or for hunting) whether loaded or not, whether the action is open or not.
I still feel that even devices designed to be hazardous and deadly, if surrounded with enough warnings, instructions, and safety measures, should not cause the maker to be liable. If they were negligent in advertisement ("GUARANTEED NEVER TO MISFIRE!") or instructions, then sure, blame them. But don't do it just to add another name to the inevitable mass party lawsuit that comes from the persons own negligence ("I thought I had blanks in it when I pointed it at my friends face and fired!")
I have never felt like we should blame the makers of a product for the misuse of it by its customers. Especially guns. I think it is just wrong for people to want to sue bushmaster for, say, a guy going on a shooting spree.
But he is being stopped. See, he wants to get their real names based off their IPs so he can personalize the computer death screen message, but courts are refusing to allow the names to be released. If only he came clean about wanting to blow up their computers instead of take their names to shake down for cash, then this would all not have happened.
Or... I know! He just wanted to send the file to his friend and bit-torrent was the only way! So he posted it on a site fully expecting that ONLY his friend who is the only other user authorized to download it would download it. It is NOT his fault that everyone else connected to his computer and accessed the movie stream pouring out of his house. In fact, they must have been guilty of the CFAA because they accessed the information on his computer without his permission! Expect them to be sued for a violation of the CFAA next.
Hmm, ok. I was just trying to figure out if maybe they had a better chance with a different tactic. Of course, in the end, the SC ruled that as long as the item was lawfully made, then no matter where it was sold or made, it was protected via second sale.
Fair enough. Would have been interesting to see them try this the other way, but I'm still glad that it ruled in our favor. Now, if only we can get a ruling regarding all this about software and the likes, maybe I can sell my overbloated Steam catalog of summer sales purchase mistakes.
Well, it's not as if customs or DHS can take items from you as-is because they believe it isn't yours. With the massive amounts of items we take with us, and since we never take proofs of purchase with us (receipts etc), we'd never be able to prove the clothes on our backs were purchased in the US.
No, what I was saying was that if a company can prove that you purchased an item out of the country and that you were attempting to resell that within the US, I was asking if anyone knew enough about the law to see if that would have been a stronger grounds for the plaintiffs to take. Since a lot of our laws are probably designed around the exchange of money between two people within the country, any sale done outside would - in my mind - be exempt from a LOT of US protections, the least of which I'd suspect is second-sale.
Sure. I certainly do not want this to come to pass, I was just playing a bit of devil's advocate and wondering why they didn't try to go after the fact that the SALE took place outside the US, not the manufacture.
So, they argued that the right of resale was void because the item in question was not created on U.S. property, and thus is not subject to the law that says items made under copyright can be resold by a third party after the initial purchase.
Couldn't the book makers have had a better argument that since it was PURCHASED outside the country, the right of resale was void, not that it was MANUFACTURED outside?
Not that I wanted that argument to work, either. I love this verdict, and am glad the second-sale doctrine is upheld, but I find it odd they went after "manufactured overseas" and not "purchased". You'd think they'd have better grounds that if the purchase wasn't made on U.S. soil that the purchase isn't recognized by the U.S., and thus there wasn't a "first sale" to trigger the "second sale" right.
I often find that non English speakers tend to spell things right, but the grammar structure is screwed up beyond recognition. Common misspellings like loose/lose and there/their/they're are just lazy Americans most of the time. And they are always too proud to correct themselves when pointed out.
I am willing to concede if this is in fact a rare case of English-second-languageism, but I doubt it.
"If other customers in India file similar complaints, perhaps ISPs will think twice before engaging in widespread censorship."
This seemed to me to criticize the ISP for willingly engaging in censorship, rather than just criticizing the process that forced the ISP into this position.
Wait, so the ISP followed the order, claiming they were told to block an entire site. They were given a penalty for doing so. When the copyright organization was asked what it had requested, it had lied and said it HADN'T asked for the entire site?
And we're angry at the ISP over this? They were bullied, lied to, and now blamed for something they were forced into.
Thank god we (and India) have such clear-cut laws. /sarcasm
About Sim City
It's a shame they haven't tried a similar strategy with other EA games like SimCity, instead choosing to lock the game up tighter than Han Solo trapped in carbonite with an always-online requirement nobody wants.
Umm... I hated just about everything they put out about Sim City, especially the online-only DRM and the social aspects of it but... You can't really say that what happened here with SWTOR is the solution to Sim City's woes.
All SWTOR did was remove the money investment that people needed, both in buying it and the monthly subscription. Nobody was complaining about Sim City's cost (aside from the people angry that PC games are costing $60, which was only that price for console games because of the massive license fee they pay to console makers), and it had no subscription.
In fact, SWTOR still has "online-only" requirements, and unlike Sim City a lot of the game's calculations are done on servers. In addition, it is arbitrarily locking up a LOT of content behind their "optional" monthly subscription pay wall, meaning that free loaders can't even use it as much as they can or get the same items, unlike in Sim City which, after its initial investment everything is available.
Long story short, I am not trying to defend Sim City's horrible choices. All I am saying is that F2P makes sense in situations, but what going F2P changed in this case would not apply to fix what was wrong with Sim City.
Re:
Hmm, actually, I'd now like to see someone do that. Take every spam email you get, and sign up that address for every mailing list on the internet.
Not that I expect that to work, what with every spam email most likely being not only unmonitored, but also a throwaway one-time deal.
Re: Re:
Ok, not quite vigilanteism, I really meant just let people go about their lives, filming events to keep for their records. Eventually, someone will accidentally get bits and pieces here and there of people, such as a video of the finish line with in the distance a guy dropping a bag and walking away. in another video, the same guy is walking with the bag, and they get the face.
I'm not at all asking people to now film things and pan the cameras to try to capture everyone doing everything in case later something happens and provide it to police, but I see how what I said could be interpreted that way.
And yeah, this fascination corporations seem to have with monitoring us disturbs me. They may do it to get our reactions to an ad, so they can better try to brainwash us into buying their products even if we didn't want it and ignore it (thank you Axe bodyspray, but please go the f*** away). And how the government is, via acts like CISPA, is simply demanding companies who gather this info for their own records now pass it to the government for uses we CERTAINLY did not authorize when we signed up for that Netflix account.
(untitled comment)
They need to crowdsource law enforcement. I'm sure if they requested politely from civilians that were there to give up the phones (temporarily) to access videos and pictures people took, they could have identified the victims just as if we had governmental cameras watching our every move.
The difference? With civilians incidentally filming me, I know they won't watch my every move as it happens to ensure I'm not breaking some silly law that nobody follows (jaywalking in suburban areas), aren't freaking out because I look middle eastern (well, some may), and won't keep the footage once there was no attack.
I'm fine being caught on random film because I know I'm too ugly for anyone to want to keep a picture of, and aren't keeping it (like the government may) to watch my every move.
(untitled comment)
Isn't this normal? Most big companies don't trust their employees not to goof off or use facebook, so block all internet access. Accessing personal emails seems like a normal deal to me (if being real strict jerks to their employees) and a company has every right.
Heck, I've worked at 4 jobs in my life, one which had no computers, two blocked everything but the intranet or the company website, and one that let me use the internet at will (which I.... promptly abused, watching a few too many cat videos on youtube).
And, well, even good computer users can be tripped up and introduce a virus. If a virus wants to get in, it will, and only staying off the internet is a good way to prevent a virus 100% of the time.
Re: Attention 14-year-olds: quit playing games, leave the basement.
I can picture it now:
*Scene - Daycare center, full of crying 6 year olds*
6 YO 1: Wahh, I don't like Barnie, I wanna watch Teletubbies!
6 YO 2: The big scary purple dinosaur scares me! Waaa!
*Enter OOTB stage right, furious*
Hey, babies, if you don't like the show, LEAVE! I don't understand why you are sticking around in this childish environment!
*Looking satisfied with himself, OOTB strides pridefully out of the room. The babies look at eachother, realize he is right, instantly grow out of it, and demand the TV be changed over to Game of Thrones*
A little story about patents
I started work interning for a software company, who makes programs designed to help a central force (IT) manage up to thousands of computers. It can send software updates, or re-image computers entirely from backups, including all kinds of alterations to the hard drive structure. Specifically, I worked on the imaging part of the program.
On that program, you can choose to image an entire drive, or image a specific partition. You can then re-deliver the image to that computer (or any other, for that matter) by, say, taking a single partition of a couple on a drive and making it the ONLY partition on the drive. One such use of this would be to remove the 5GB recovery partition some pre-built computers come with (or add it back in).
The way the company does this is it essentially copies every single file off into a single folder-type file (.img), wipes the drive of its contents, then rebuilds the partition table to have the right number and then copies it back in.
This massive waste of space (having up to the entirety of the old drive minus the small partition) copied to another computer while you wipe it seemed like a waste to me. I asked the developer of the program if it was possible to simply go into the small part of the drive where it says the partition 1 goes from, say, block 0 to block 65000 and partition 2 goes from block 65000 to 69000 and just make part 1 go all the way across. You can leave the data as it is, just change where you are allowed to store files.
No, he said. Someone already patented it. A big corporation has the patent on being able to rewrite the partition table to delete or add partitions at will, so no other company can develop it themselves. I, not even a programmer, had figured out the simple steps to do it, yet if we were to implement said technique, we'd get sued because we couldn't PROVE we independently developed such technology. We couldn't PROVE that we didn't just copy their code. We couldn't PROVE that we weren't "inspired" by their hard work and the patent they made.
And so, we have to do 2+ hours of work for a single computer, tied up gigabytes of information, just because I didn't think of the idea first. I didn't KNOW I wasn't first, or that someone else did it, or how they did it, but that doesn't matter. Just like in copyright, even though YOU can do all the work yourself (making a remix isn't as simple as copying someone's mp3 and posting it on the internet), you are not allowed to profit from the work you did on something.
Re: Re:
I understand your point, but while guns are designed to kill people, it is still up to the end user who voluntarily purchased the item to use it in a responsible fashion. To use another product... Ornamental swords and various "ninja items". Throughout time they had been used to more easily kill other people, yet you shouldn't blame the sword maker if someone buys it and uses it against people.
Guns come with all kinds of safety measures. By themselves, they cannot injure anyone (fingers caught in the action not counting), and must take an additional step of purchasing another item and loading it into the device. As well, most guns come with safety catches, some with multiple (grip safety, trigger safety, etc) to try to minimize accidents as much as possible.
Not to mention the many MANY warnings in the manual stating to never point a device at another person (which means they intend these devices for other than killing, such as for entertainment at a shooting range or for hunting) whether loaded or not, whether the action is open or not.
I still feel that even devices designed to be hazardous and deadly, if surrounded with enough warnings, instructions, and safety measures, should not cause the maker to be liable. If they were negligent in advertisement ("GUARANTEED NEVER TO MISFIRE!") or instructions, then sure, blame them. But don't do it just to add another name to the inevitable mass party lawsuit that comes from the persons own negligence ("I thought I had blanks in it when I pointed it at my friends face and fired!")
(untitled comment)
I have never felt like we should blame the makers of a product for the misuse of it by its customers. Especially guns. I think it is just wrong for people to want to sue bushmaster for, say, a guy going on a shooting spree.
We need more of this here.
Re: Re: Maybe he used it as a filelocker!
But he is being stopped. See, he wants to get their real names based off their IPs so he can personalize the computer death screen message, but courts are refusing to allow the names to be released. If only he came clean about wanting to blow up their computers instead of take their names to shake down for cash, then this would all not have happened.
Maybe he used it as a filelocker!
Or... I know! He just wanted to send the file to his friend and bit-torrent was the only way! So he posted it on a site fully expecting that ONLY his friend who is the only other user authorized to download it would download it. It is NOT his fault that everyone else connected to his computer and accessed the movie stream pouring out of his house. In fact, they must have been guilty of the CFAA because they accessed the information on his computer without his permission! Expect them to be sued for a violation of the CFAA next.
Re: Re: Re: Comment all in the tag:
Then wouldn't he reply to other comments, rather than shoot a comment and leave?
Re: Re: Re: Re:
Hmm, ok. I was just trying to figure out if maybe they had a better chance with a different tactic. Of course, in the end, the SC ruled that as long as the item was lawfully made, then no matter where it was sold or made, it was protected via second sale.
Fair enough. Would have been interesting to see them try this the other way, but I'm still glad that it ruled in our favor. Now, if only we can get a ruling regarding all this about software and the likes, maybe I can sell my overbloated Steam catalog of summer sales purchase mistakes.
Re: Re:
Well, it's not as if customs or DHS can take items from you as-is because they believe it isn't yours. With the massive amounts of items we take with us, and since we never take proofs of purchase with us (receipts etc), we'd never be able to prove the clothes on our backs were purchased in the US.
No, what I was saying was that if a company can prove that you purchased an item out of the country and that you were attempting to resell that within the US, I was asking if anyone knew enough about the law to see if that would have been a stronger grounds for the plaintiffs to take. Since a lot of our laws are probably designed around the exchange of money between two people within the country, any sale done outside would - in my mind - be exempt from a LOT of US protections, the least of which I'd suspect is second-sale.
Re: Re:
Sure. I certainly do not want this to come to pass, I was just playing a bit of devil's advocate and wondering why they didn't try to go after the fact that the SALE took place outside the US, not the manufacture.
(untitled comment)
So, they argued that the right of resale was void because the item in question was not created on U.S. property, and thus is not subject to the law that says items made under copyright can be resold by a third party after the initial purchase.
Couldn't the book makers have had a better argument that since it was PURCHASED outside the country, the right of resale was void, not that it was MANUFACTURED outside?
Not that I wanted that argument to work, either. I love this verdict, and am glad the second-sale doctrine is upheld, but I find it odd they went after "manufactured overseas" and not "purchased". You'd think they'd have better grounds that if the purchase wasn't made on U.S. soil that the purchase isn't recognized by the U.S., and thus there wasn't a "first sale" to trigger the "second sale" right.
Re: Re: Most of these movies are crap
Hehe, the first time I heard of Puss N Boots was the horrible but strangely addictive NES version I played growing up.
Re: Dang
I often find that non English speakers tend to spell things right, but the grammar structure is screwed up beyond recognition. Common misspellings like loose/lose and there/their/they're are just lazy Americans most of the time. And they are always too proud to correct themselves when pointed out.
I am willing to concede if this is in fact a rare case of English-second-languageism, but I doubt it.
Re: Re:
The final paragraph of the article:
"If other customers in India file similar complaints, perhaps ISPs will think twice before engaging in widespread censorship."
This seemed to me to criticize the ISP for willingly engaging in censorship, rather than just criticizing the process that forced the ISP into this position.
(untitled comment)
Wait, so the ISP followed the order, claiming they were told to block an entire site. They were given a penalty for doing so. When the copyright organization was asked what it had requested, it had lied and said it HADN'T asked for the entire site?
And we're angry at the ISP over this? They were bullied, lied to, and now blamed for something they were forced into.
Thank god we (and India) have such clear-cut laws. /sarcasm