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Comment Re:"There is no right to play" (Score 1) 214

Don't know which country you're in, but mine has a law concerning "fitness for purpose" that overrides anything a business puts in its EULA.

So basically all of that banners in FOSS that claim that "this software comes without any implied warranty, not even a warranty of fitness for a particular purpose" have little legal sense, if any? IANAL, just really curious.

Yes. It focuses attention on the problem.

Whose attention? Nerds already know about it, it's not news for nerds. If someone somehow manages to get the attention of the masses and to make them reaaaally hate DRM and refuse to buy anything infested with it, that's quite a feat. However I honestly doubt that it is a realistic goal, because there's an army of specialists in arts, design, and human psychology employed by the entertainment corporations that work to achieve the opposite result.

Comment Re:New form of extreme masochism? (Score 1) 214

While I agree with your sentiment, GP did complain on the inability to read the EULA before opening the game's box. My argument here is exclusively to prove him wrong, not to conduct psychiatric research. Still, if you do publish a paper on this subject in a peer-reviewed journal, please post a follow-up story here on Slashdot!

Comment "There is no right to play" (Score 2, Insightful) 214

The game corporations will claim that there is no right to play, and maybe even insert a clause that means roughly that into the EULA. It is their right: if you don't agree with their offer, don't buy it! There are more good games around than you can possibly play in your free time, and there is no lack of other entertainment options either, so please stop whining.
There have always been (and there will always be) shitty or crippled products. Or even otherwise wonderful products that have one huge defect. There will always be stupid managers and lazy engineers. Just walk the other way, don't stick to them - life's too short. In this particular case, every single slashdotter knows that DRM is bad (if you don't, please hand in your geek card on your way out). Do we really need to revel in its failure every single time a major game studio screws its customers?
Microsoft

TJX Hacker Claims US Authorized His Crimes 159

doperative writes "Convicted hacker Albert Gonzalez is asking a federal judge to throw out his earlier guilty pleas and lift his record-breaking 20-year prison sentence, on allegations that the government authorized his years-long crime spree. From the article: 'The government has acknowledged that Gonzalez was a key undercover Secret Service informant at the time of the breaches. Now, in a March 24 habeas corpus petition filed in the US District Court in Massachusetts, Gonzalez asserts that the Secret Service authorized him to commit the crimes. “I still believe that I was acting on behalf of the United States Secret Service and that I was authorized and directed to engage in the conduct I committed as part of my assignment to gather intelligence and seek out international cyber criminals,” he wrote. “I now know and understand that I have been used as a scapegoat to cover someone’s mistakes.”'"

Comment Re:Wait, what? (Score 2) 519

Since the app's precise purpose is texting, it naturally requests and receives these permissions during installation. Think of it as a third-party texting app, like Handcent SMS: it wouldn't be supercool to have to confirm every single SMS you try to send, would it?

Comment Predictable (Score 2) 164

That's a good, though unsurprising decision. Bandwidth should be used for the purposes that the infrastructure has been built for. Recreational uses are completely optional, IMO, and no one sane should expect them to be available during a conflict or a crisis. There's job to be done that you signed up to do, so go ahead and do it. And may God stand between you and harm.

Comment Re:Legal precedent (Score 1) 121

There are plenty of home router manufacturers; if one would insert ads into processed traffic without compensating the user by substantially lowering the router price, people would just stop buying its hardware. Just being able to do something doesn't immediately make it a good business decision.

Comment Re:Legal precedent (Score 1) 121

If done properly, it would be great. However, the potential for misuse is still pretty high: in the "best" case, the CDN's antivirus software may glitch and trigger removal of harmless content, ruining someone's day. In the worst case, war crime reports may be magically cut out or replaced with pictures of rainbows and unicorns.

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