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Comment IP addresses have nothing at all to do with this (Score 1) 88

Proxy servers have nothing to do with this, it has everything to do with how they determine your location.

They triangulate your location using the closest cell phone towers, and get your position that way. The problem with this is that for the 300,000+ people in Jersey City or Hoboken, the strongest cell tower may be located in New York City where internet gaming is illegal, and you get shut out of using the services. Same goes for the people in Camden that may get a signal indicating they are in Philadelphia.

Yes this can be easily defeated by buying a Tracfone and leaving it at a friends house + VPN, but for non tech savvy people this is a huge deal. In Nevada when they implemented this is wasn't really a problem because besides Lake Tahoe, barely any of the population lives right on the border next to a large population center.

Comment The majority of new games have Online Multiplayer (Score 1) 572

So to a person in a position of power at Microsoft, this is a very straightforward progression to tie the game experience into some kind of server-side authentication scheme

Coming up with some anecdotes about how SOME people don't have the luxury of an always on internet connection does not change this

I am not defending DRM, but I do believe the next step the console industry will take is widespread single-use codes to lock out used games on top of the line Titles (because of the success EA has had with it on Madden), and that always-on DRM is still a little ways off from being the industry standard for everything

Comment Re:WTF is this doing on MY slashdot? (Score 2) 757

Second, the D team is offering no plan at all to deal with the elephant in the room. The ginormous deficit and rampant spending. Obama promised to cut the deficit in half and instead doubled it

Without being dishonest, explain why offering large tax cuts for the wealthy somehow solves the problem of the deficit?

"Deficits are too high" is a red herring for selfish pricks that are too cowardly to actually say what they mean.

Paul Ryan was elected on a platform of fiscal responsibility, and one of the first things he did after taking office was to support legislation attempting to criminalize forms of already widely accepted birth control.

Comment Re:So from here on out ... (Score 1) 2416

LOL at the idea of you being apathetic enough to stay home on election day, but somehow this motivates you enough to vote.

the vast majority of people that would be upset by this, would already have been voting for Romney in the first place.

be upset all you want by the ruling, but dont think for a minute that anybody is convinced by your fake indignation, clown.

Comment Re:It's self-promotion .... (Score 1) 181

It's a matter of their priorities. They waste 2 years and countless amounts of time and resources to bust a mere 26 carders?

Why does the number of people busted matter to you?

Isn't the amount of compromised numbers a far more relevant figure?

One person selling 400,000 stolen cards vs 100 people selling those same 400,000 cards will hypothetically result in the same amount of theft

Comment Schilling is a coward (Score 2) 137

That gladly preaches on behalf of Republican Senator Scott Brown for supposedly smaller government, all the while sticking his greedy hands out for as much government subsidized $$$ as he could muster as a "world series hero"

all government spending is evil in his hypocritical world, unless you're a clown that pissed away $75 million in taxpayer money so he could play video game developer

Comment Re:So what. (Score 4, Insightful) 325

A player is expected to have a finite life as an active user, probably less than two years. The price of the game is set based on assumptions about the attrition rate. Giving the game to another user extends the length of time the server load exists for that copy of the software.

Tough shit for the developers, accept it as a cost of business and move on. The nanosecond that someone figures a way to play with a private server, they lose a paying customer forever when someones friend of a friend shows him how to play online for free and becomes a pirate in the process. EA Sports and such can get away with this because of the nature of their business, because that copy of Madden 12 is really only played online for 18 months tops before it becomes obsolete anyway.

Comment Re:So how do I get iOS 4.3? (Score 2) 1118

Honest question, I'm wondering what you feel the upcoming gingerbread tablets are lacking that makes the iPad that much better? I'm still not convinced i need.. or even want.. either, but right now if i did it would be android simply so i'm not locked into iTunes again. Hated that with my iPhone, don't want to go back.

The android market has a very small fraction of the high end apps and games that the itunes store offers. I believe this will change in the future, but as of today its not even close. Honestly, it wouldnt matter if not for the fact that almost all of the most popular applications are ios only.

Comment Re:First Thought (Score 1) 148

No it shouldn't be taxed. People should only be taxed for what they use, when I buy an online good for physical money what service of the government am I using? I use paypal which is a private company to use my private credit card on a private site to get something online which go through the privately owned internet lines which I pay for out of my own pocket, to another privately owned server where I play my game. Pay for what you use, the government doesn't even enter into the equation except for a very, very, very, small amount. Such exchanges should never be taxed. The government should be a service provider, nothing more. If you don't use the service for a transaction you don't have to pay. Taxing such things is like adding shipping and handling to them, they don't need it so it shouldn't be paid.

use taxes inherently punish the poor, for whom the taxes are a much larger percentage of their comparatively smaller income.

Comment Re:Good Fix... (Score 1) 460

Explain how stock trading liquidity is a benefit in and of itself - to human society and the Earth's biosphere - rather than as a benefit only to those wanting to extract wealth from the markets due to volatility.

Providing liquidity means that investors will have the confidence that whenever they with to exit the market, there will always be a willing buyer. If you do no have faith that there will always be someone willing to buy when you want to sell, then you have no incentive to make the investment in the first place.

Comment Re:FAIL! (Score 1, Troll) 492

With both engadget and Gizmodo getting their hands on the "next iPhone" in different bars in different cities, it is difficult to believe that somebody actually lost the phones. Either both engadget and Gizmodo got fooled or this is more a marketing campaign than lost phones. I would bet on latter.

Its far more likely that these are just very well made counterfeits, and that the people at gizmodo are fucking stupid. (or they know its fake but realize that they will get a shitload of hits)

Comment Re:The difference (Score 3, Insightful) 262

Wrong. Freedom of speech is freedom from responsibility - it protects not only the act of speaking, but from being punished for it.

The thing is, freedom of speech is selective; it's purpose is to protect political (or artistic) speech, but it is limited in other cases, like libel or in this case, it might be protected by Personality Rights.

No, it protects you from being punished by the government, there are countless reasons one can be successfully punished in civil court for something that is clearly "protected speech"

You are free to disseminate trade secrets of a corporation you worked for, but they are free to sue the living shit out of you for it.

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