A year or two ago, I was doing helpdesk stuff when a user called in regarding a phishing e-mail they'd received regarding some transaction in Africa. They wanted to know if it was legitimate, because it sounded (to him) like the business opportunity of a lifetime. I told him that it was a scam, and explained how the scam worked. He thought for a moment, and said "Yeah, maybe, but he's promising millions!" (uh oh)

I directed him to read up on some of the 419 anti-scam sites. We read the literature together, and discussed why these operations work, and why it's dangerous to respond to them, etc.

At the end of the call, despite having spent more than 45 minutes trying to dissuade him, and having read multiple stories that all had the same general flow, he remained skeptical of MY explanation that it was a scam. He wanted to believe it was legitimate, and so he believed it was legitimate.

I haven't spoken to him since, but some of my colleagues have. We came to the general consensus that he probably sent several thousand dollars to them before realizing it was fake. :/

Try playing WoW between 5am and 11am Pacific time on a Tuesday.

(For those who don't play WoW, that's typically the time when maintenance occurs, patches get deployed, etc.)

FTA:

If I'm reading the trial order correctly (IANAL), it seems to cite the following cases in support of "non-literal elements" being copyrighted:

What I'd like to see from Siy and Pearlman is a description of what these cases are, and why their citation is somehow irrelevant with regards to non-literal elements and copyright enforceability. The judge certainly seemed to think they applied. (Again, if I'm reading the order correctly. I might be wrong. Who knows.)

Sounds like it was actually the name of a product back then, from 1984. Check out Wikipedia regarding it:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KoalaPad/Painter

I also remember hearing it called that.

His shirt/pants/underwear/socks (whichever suits your fancy. Oh, hey, suits is another option!)

Although I haven't been in a store that sold new VHS tapes in years, I'm a little apprehensive.

While it is true that many shows have been re-released in DVD format, there are plenty of titles that did not (and/or will not) see re-release. In many cases, these aren't "essential" or "good" works, but film historians often use relics of the past to show the evolution of a director's style or the level of technological development at the time. They might also use these works to show the political climate of the country it was produced in, or as a source for historical evaluation.

If you need to make a film based in 1988, wouldn't it be nice if you had a lot of filmed material from 1988? What if you can't get access to what you know you need because it was all copyrighted, but never released on DVD? What if you can't find a collector who's willing to sell you their VHS tapes?

I don't think it's a fault so much of VHS going out of the market, but of copyright law. It's easy to find a VCR, or a tape deck or a record player, but finding a specific release from those mediums is nearly impossible without extensive searching, often commanding high prices from collectors. If that material was considered out of copyright, I could take my library and digitize it, throw up a torrent, and *poof* it's around for forever.. but because I can't, it will sit around until I'm an old man before there's even a glimmer of hope that it might be made available to the public.

This story is not news.

TwentyFifthNovember is a guild made up of Nihilum and SK-Gaming (aka Curse). Both guilds had members that experienced Naxxramas at level 60 (when it was originally released), and most of the bosses in Naxxramas (retuned and re-released for level 80) are largely unchanged since that time. Both of these guilds had very significant presences in the Closed Beta, where this raid content was available for anyone who could gather enough players. Many of them killed these bosses for weeks and months, before the game went live. The slight differences between these bosses at level 60 versus these bosses at level 80 is minor enough that even those who DIDN'T see the retuned content would still know how to get past it.

Raiding in World of Warcraft is more about skill than gear (although there are a few hard gear checks, such as needing 8.5k HP to survive Naj'entus area-effect nuke). These guys certainly are skillful, but there was never any doubt that they would steamroll all of this content as soon as they hit 80. The slightly bigger concern is that they managed to get 25 members to level 80 in ~65 hours of gameplay. Still, with the first 80 after 27 hours, it wasn't unexpected. People were hitting level 70 in Burning Crusade in about the same amount of time, and once the strategy for doing so was optimized, anyone (with a lot of time, and/or friends) could grind out the levels.

One thing to note is that these guys don't yet have the ultra-rare achievement awards, for example:
http://www.wowhead.com/?achievement=2138

Heroic Glory of the Raider involves a series of moderate to very hard challenges in Naxx, with the reward being an exclusive Proto-Drake mount. Until they get that, it's not news.. and even if they do get that, they've STILL got the qualifiers mentioned earlier.

How do video games fall into this continuum of "unhappy" to "happy"? In some respects, video games are like TV, like reading (many RPGs, visual novels), and (particularly with MMOs and live competitive games) socializing, too.

No display, and dials random numbers.