CobraA1

Reply to Game Cheats Are Illegal? in Personal Computing GalCiv2 Forums

[quote]The problem is that by attempting a legal solution to a technical problem[/quote] . . . and the problem with the "technical problem" is that it's a virtually unsolvable problem. I've gone through the information theory I know of, and ultimately whichever program gets installed on the user's computer first will always have the upper hand. If the bot is installed before WoW is installed, there's vitually no way to guaruntee that WoW can detect it's on the same computer a

Reply to Game Cheats Are Illegal? in Personal Computing GalCiv2 Forums

[quote]How the hell do you call "license enclosed" fair warning?[/quote] Do you have a better idea? Pretty much everywhere they can, they make the license available. It's in the box, on their website, shown whenever the client is installed or updated, available from the client before you login, etc. It's pretty difficult to miss. Maybe they should make it more obvious on the retail shelves somehow? I know that when buying it electronically, it's plastered all over the

Reply to Monthly Fee for MMOs in PC Gaming GalCiv2 Forums

[quote]If you think Blizzard ranks right up there with Enron, oil companies, and predatory lenders, well then, for goodness sake don't use their products![/quote] Agreed. You don't have to play MMORPGs if you don't like them.

Reply to Monthly Fee for MMOs in PC Gaming GalCiv2 Forums

[quote]why do you think they have so many Guild Wars games out.[/quote] Yup, and they're working on Guild Wars 2 and you can bet they'll have several expansions for that as well. Guild Wars makes its money by regularly releasing new expansions. In addition, Guild Wars was created by former Blizzard employees, and they license their technology to NCSoft, so they're probably making a lot of money there as well. Every MMORPG I know of has some way of have having continuou

Reply to Game Cheats Are Illegal? in Personal Computing GalCiv2 Forums

[quote]Note,: This "Owner of a Copy" person is different than the "Owner of a copyright"[/quote] Interesting claim, and I had to [link="http://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap1.html#101"]look that one up[/link]. Appears you are correct. The problem isn't that I wasn't reading what you had linked to - the problem is that I didn't have my definitions straight, which were in another document. If I'm not quite understanding everything, [b]please[/b] do not immediately assume I am n

Reply to Game Cheats Are Illegal? in Personal Computing GalCiv2 Forums

[quote]it rests on an interpretation of Blizzards EULA between Blizzard and the person that bought the the CD with the WoW client. [/quote] Correct. In this case, they are discussing MDY's licensed (not owned) copy of the intellectual property (IP henceforth). As far as I am aware, MDY does not actually own the copyright on any of Blizzard's IP. [quote]Retroactively 'steals' the title of the CD - THE PHYSICAL MEDIA THAT YOU WALKED OUT OF THE STORE WITH - from the person tha

Reply to Game Cheats Are Illegal? in Personal Computing GalCiv2 Forums

[quote] Cobra, the judge shitting on the law doesn't change reality.[/quote] Reality is, this could affect future rulings on EULAs and the efforts of companies to stop bots in multiplayer games. In this case, I personally think there is nothing wrong with software companies having some control over piracy, and there is nothing wrong with game companies wanting some control over bots. You can yell "but they can ban" until you're blue in the face, but frankly regular

Reply to How to be laid back in Everything Else GalCiv2 Forums

To add my two cents worth: [b]Don't dwell in the past.[/b] It doesn't mean you can't learn from the past, and it doesn't mean you can't occasionally enjoy something old, and it doesn't mean that history is unimportant. What it does mean is don't spend so much time thinking about past events that you sacrifice the present and the future. I see so many people worry so much that it destroys their life. In addition, I also see too many people "keep record" of othe

Reply to PC game piracy hurts us all in GalCiv Journals GalCiv2 Forums

[quote]I'm a shallow, petty person, and I know about that two-wrongs bullshit. But I don't buy it, and I don't think anyone who has a clue would either.[/quote] I'd love to hear the logic on this one. How do we solve any problems if we keep on backstabbing each other? It's a lose-lose situation. You lose by getting increasingly crappy games, and they lose by getting their games pirated. You're not going to be getting any better games with such a lousy attitude. In the meantime,

Reply to Game Cheats Are Illegal? in Personal Computing GalCiv2 Forums

[quote]You have absolutely no clue. The relevant text from the copyright act has already been posted more than once. It is explicitly stated that copyrights do not pertain to the copying required for use of the software, or for backup purposes.[/quote] The judge ruled that [link="http://docs.justia.com/cases/federal/district-courts/arizona/azdce/2:2006cv02555/322017/82/"]the relevant text you refer to only applies to the owner of the copyright[/link], and not to licensees. You

Reply to Game Cheats Are Illegal? in Personal Computing GalCiv2 Forums

[quote] A) that a company can use this interpretation of an EULA to render *any* action by their customer 'illegal', regardless of the actual legality of the action itself.[/quote] It only renders copying the software as illegal. [quote] B) That the only legal restriction on this ability is if it runs afoul of either anti-trust legislation or that it be declared 'unconscionable' by a court of law.[/quote] Actually, copyright law has fair use restrictions. <

Reply to Game Cheats Are Illegal? in Personal Computing GalCiv2 Forums

[quote]I have yet to figure out why everyone deeply believes that somehow software companies need a contract written to their specification that the consumer can't read before purchase when no other company selling to the public at large seems to need this.[/quote] Physical products do not fall under copyright law. Copyright law is used for products that contain intellectual property, and it is generally accepted that software contains intellectual property. I do agree that the

Reply to Gas Prices: $12-$15/gallon in Everything Else GalCiv2 Forums

. . . and I'd like to add that even with the relatively short range of the electric cars, it's still more than enough to get to work and back, which is something most people do on a daily basis. I can still keep a gasoline or hybrid vehicle around for long trips such as vacations. Even if I'm using the electric (or plug-in hybrid) car for just work and errands, that's still the vast majority of my driving, because I take that trip daily! As far as democracy vs other fo

Reply to Piracy, Magic, and War: Free MMOs in PC Gaming GalCiv2 Forums

I'm aware of some other methods of payment for MMORPGs: Guild Wars takes the classic approach used for most online games - it costs money to buy, but is totally free to play. This means there isn't a steady flow of money like other MMORPGs, but if they follow an episodic approach and release expansions on a regular basis, they can still get a regular flow of money. Silkroad and some other lesser known MMORPGs take an unusual approach by offering premium items that can be bought

Reply to Gas Prices: $12-$15/gallon in Everything Else GalCiv2 Forums

while(psychoak.usesWord("fuck")) { psychoak.mouth.washWith(new Soap("Ivory")); } Many electric cars are up to about 200 miles, and yes I think that eventually we'll find something that stores more energy and recharges faster. It might not even be a battery - other technologies like super capacitors may also work, and capacitors have the advantage of being able to charge very quickly. They don't yet have the same amount of storage as a battery, but it's a new area o

Reply to Gas Prices: $12-$15/gallon in Everything Else GalCiv2 Forums

[quote]In other words, democratic systems are messy.[/quote] Yeah, so far democracy has done the best job at preserving the idea that the community decides which direction to go in the future, rather than stuff being dictated to them by somebody who may not have the interests of the community in mind. I think the Churchill quote is a good one. Free market economics works on a similar principle: Customers get a choice between competing companies, and therefore "votes using their

Reply to WHATS BEST FOR GAMING in Personal Computing GalCiv2 Forums

[quote]The 8800GTS is pushing two years and it still plays anything released this generation smooth as butter.[/quote] I'll have to agree with this - I've found that rarely do you really need the latest, greatest video card for games. My 6800 could play any DirectX 9 game on the market, and even though the 7 series cards were popular, I never really saw any major advantage in upgrading it. That, plus I didn't really have the money at the time anyways - it's pretty expensive to keep on t

Reply to WHATS BEST FOR GAMING in Personal Computing GalCiv2 Forums

[quote]whitehall, i've had 2 74 gig raptors and 2 150 gig raptors. i've used them as individual drives and in a raid array. in my opinion, if you're not running them in a raid array, you're wasting your money getting one. buy another 500 gig drive and raid them.[/quote] If I'm reading his JUMBLEDUPWORDS correctly, he's got a 64 bit machine, and should be able to put a lot of memory in it. He may see a bigger performance boost by increasing the amount of RAM in his system than by spendin

Reply to Gas Prices: $12-$15/gallon in Everything Else GalCiv2 Forums

"Their net income . . ." . . . isn't necessarily wasted money. I suppose we're being a bit guilty of not seeing the forest through the trees: The question is, how much of that profit or how much of our taxes is being spent on something constructive, and how much of it is being spent on what we would consider wasteful. The first step I suppose is to decide what's wasteful and what isn't. Unfortunately, we may have varying opinions and may not agree on what constitutes waste :(.

Reply to WHATS BEST FOR GAMING in Personal Computing GalCiv2 Forums

[quote]Depends on your resolution, if you use something like 1280x1024 a 256mb card is more than enough.[/quote] More and more games are pushing for high resolution textures and multiple layers of those textures. Geometry shaders will only make it worse by exploding the number of polygons as well. Smaller screen sizes may mean smaller screen buffers, but that won't change the amount of memory high resolution textures are using. I think in the future texture and geometry may ove

Reply to WHATS BEST FOR GAMING in Personal Computing GalCiv2 Forums

[quote]But you cant beet the price to quality performance of ati. [/quote] Well, my 9600 was pretty cheap, and I don't seem to be having any quality problems in any of my games - I can turn all of them all the way up. Well, except maybe Crysis. [quote]I've got a friend with an 8600GT and his framerate is lowered by nearly 100fps in Source games when using Vista.[/quote] The 8600 was one of their worse cards - it had the same amount of memory as my 6800 (256 MB), which

Reply to Gas Prices: $12-$15/gallon in Everything Else GalCiv2 Forums

[quote]Ah - but most companies, ah, issue dividends.[/quote] According to my accounting book ([i]Accounting[/i]. Warren Reeve Fess. Pages 493 to 495), there are a couple types of dividends: Cash dividends and Stock dividends. Cash dividends require formal action by the board of directors, as well as sufficient retained earnings and of course the cash itself. Stock dividends, on the other hand, just add more to the stock. If I'm reading my book correctly, that is. I'm not a CPA. <br/

Reply to WHATS BEST FOR GAMING in Personal Computing GalCiv2 Forums

[quote]I beg to differ. In Vista nVidia still has quite a few problems that ATi doesn't. I'm not saying ATi's drivers are perfect but they sure are developed far better than nVidia's are under VISTA.[/quote] [b]Vista, Business edition, 64 bit.[/b] GeForce 9600 GT. Yes, it is stable. nVidia may have had troubles in the past, but it's my opinion that the issues have been resolved, and that both manufacturers currently have stable drivers.

Reply to Gas Prices: $12-$15/gallon in Everything Else GalCiv2 Forums

[quote] . . . so long as the government inefficiency is less than the corporate inefficiency+Management Salaries+Shareholder profits . . . [/quote] Not much difference that I can see. Congress votes to raise its own salaries, and the amount of money dumped into pork barrel spending makes the management salaries and shareholder "profits" of even Microsoft look like chump change. Is government truly more efficient, or is its inefficiencies just given different names? . . . not to

Reply to A Futuristic Metal....... in Everything Else GalCiv2 Forums

[quote]why isn't there a metal that solidifies when extreme heat is applied to it[/quote] Such a metal would only do so at very specific temperatures and pressures, and would likely be partially a semiconductor, since it would likely work using principles similar to liquid crystals. If you go well beyond the specific temperatures/pressures, it will break down and revert back to the normal behavior we associate with most metals. [quote]and instantly solidifies when extreme heat