bike_head - Slashdot User

Lineage II Addiction Lawsuit Makes It Past the EULA 267

Posted by Soulskill on Thursday September 02, 2010 @03:29AM from the four-little-letters dept.

We recently discussed a man who sued NCsoft for making Lineage II "too addictive" after he spent 20,000 hours over five years playing it. Now, several readers have pointed out that the lawsuit has progressed past its first major hurdle: the EULA. Quoting: "NC Interactive has responded the way most software companies and online services have for more than a decade: it argued that the claims are barred by its end-user license agreement, which in this case capped the company's liability to the amount Smallwood paid in fees over six months prior to his filing his complaint (or thereabouts). One portion of the EULA specifically stated that lawsuits could only be brought in Texas state court in Travis County, where NC Interactive is located. ... But the judge in this case, US District Judge Alan C. Kay, noted that both Texas and Hawaii law bar contract provisions that waive in advance the ability to make gross-negligence claims. He also declined to dismiss Smallwood's claims for negligence, defamation, and negligent infliction of emotional distress."

Can You Fight DRM With Patience? 309

Posted by Soulskill on Thursday March 18, 2010 @05:39AM from the napalm-works-better dept.

As modern DRM schemes get more annoying and invasive, the common wisdom is to vote with your wallet and avoid supporting developers and publishers who include such schemes with their games. Or, if you simply must play it, wait a while until outcry and complaints have caused the DRM restrictions to be loosened. But will any of that make game creators rethink their stance? An article at CNet argues that gamers are, in general, an impatient bunch, and that trait combined with the nature of the games industry means that progress fighting DRM will be slow or nonexistent. Quoting: "Increasingly so, the joke seems to be on the customers who end up buying this software when it first comes out. A simple look back at some controversial titles has shown us that after the initial sales come, the publisher later removes the vast majority of the DRM, leaving gamers to enjoy the software with fewer restrictions. ... Still, [waiting until later to purchase the game] isn't a good long-term solution. Early sales are often one of the big quantifiers in whether a studio will start working on a sequel, and if everyone were to wait to buy games once they hit the bargain price, publishers would simply stop making PC versions. There's also no promise that the really heavy bits of DRM will be stripped out at a later date, except for the fact that most publishers are unlikely to want to maintain the cost of running the activation, and/or online verification servers for older software."

Myst Online: Uru Live Returns As Free-To-Play 58

Posted by Soulskill on Wednesday February 17, 2010 @04:46AM from the uru-is-dead-long-live-uru dept.

agrif writes "Shorah b'shemtee! Uru Live has been released for free, as a first step towards opening its source. This game, an MMO released by the makers of Myst and Riven in 2003, has been canceled, zombified, resurrected, canceled again, and is now about to be released as open source to its dedicated fan base. Massively has written a brief newbie guide if you're unfamiliar with the game."

Comment Re:I can't be the only one (Score 1) 705

by bike_head on Monday August 17, 2009 @02:24PM (#29095515) Attached to: "District 9" Best Sci-fi Movie of 09?

I just wanted to respond to some of the claimed "holes" that the parent mentions and I've also seen mentioned in other posts.

.. the hero (Van De Merwe) I had a hard time rooting for instead of rooting that we would just get shot. He was weak and pathetic, and only had courage while in the exo-suit, and even then, he was wishy-washy.

The story makes a big point of pointing out his indecision. The strength of the story is that he changes because of his experience, but doesn't magically become a cartoon action hero is the course of 3 days.

... I just couldn't believe the government would allow the Nigerians to become so powerful inside the district, especially when they knew how dangerous they were.

The example of modern slums would counter your point.

...The father in law was evil for no apparent reason, and his wife suddenly believes Wilkus without explanation why?

The movie makes a point of showing scenes before his transformation that the father-in-law doesn't respect Wikus and I inferred that he didn't believe Wikus good enough for the daughter. The fact that Wikus is put in charge of the highly dangerous task of evicting the aliens would seem to hint to the viewer that the FIL didn't have his safety in mind in the first place.

.. why weren't the aliens using the weapons to revolt instead of selling them to the Nigerians?

Again the film explains that aliens seem to be part of a low-intelligence worker class that tends to be gullible and do what they are told. The movie mentions that one of the mysteries is where the leaders went.

I went to see the movie with my 14-year old daughter and we both found the plot much more interesting and compelling then any SF we've seen all year; though I haven't seen moon and we would give a shout out for the horror flick "Let the Right One In".

Passenger Avoids Delay By Fixing Plane Himself 178

Posted by samzenpus on Monday July 06, 2009 @01:11PM from the flying-the-diy-skies dept.

It would be a shame if an engineer on a recent Thomas Cook Airlines flight doesn't get a complimentary first class upgrade every time he flies. The engineer was on flight TCX9641 when it was announced that the trip would be delayed eight hours, while a mechanic was flown in to fix a problem. Luckily for the other passengers, the engineer happened to work for Thomsonfly Airlines, which has a reciprocal maintenance agreement with Thomas Cook. After about 35 minutes the man fixed the problem and the flight was on its way. A spokeswoman for Thomas Cook said, "When they announced there was a technical problem he came forward and said who he was. We checked his licence and verified he was who he said he was, and he was able to fix the problem to avoid the delay. We are very grateful that he was on the flight that day."

Comment Re:Games (Score 2, Interesting) 1365

by bike_head on Monday May 18, 2009 @01:19PM (#27999435) Attached to: Why Linux Is Not Yet Ready For the Desktop

I'm a linux user that recently installed Fedora 10, Fedora 11, Ubuntu 9.04, Vista Basic, Windows XP. I basically did fresh installs on a Dell studio hybrid.

Fedoras - used live cd and added packages I wanted over the net. Due to open source restrictions I had to do command line magic to enable wireless.

Ubundu - again a live cd over the internet. Had to enable the non-free repos to get wireless

Vista - after guided install I had no ethernet (wired or wireless) and simple VGA display. I had to use Dells not so obvious "additional software" CD to get these drivers.

XP - after guided install I had no ethernet (wired or wireless) and simple VGA display. I was using a developer copy of XP, so I had to go to another machine to get the proper drivers from the DELL suport site, put them on a USB stick to get the network up in order to update the rest of the system

Which was the easiest system to install? Well Vista of course because that was the OS that was PREINSTALLED! When I had to do the install I would just say tha all had their challenges, but an OS that installs out of the box with no ethernet drivers is a PITA.

Ubuntu 9.04 RC Released 239

Posted by timothy on Friday April 17, 2009 @12:30AM from the delicious-candy dept.

Mohamed Zaian writes "The Ubuntu team has released the release candidate for Ubuntu 9.04; 'The Ubuntu team is happy to bring you the latest and greatest software the Open Source community has to offer. This is their latest result, the Ubuntu 9.04 release candidate, which brings a host of excellent new features.' The various other Ubuntu-derived distributions, like Kubuntu, have also had their RCs released."

O'Reilly Now Competing With Sun Java Certificates 44

Posted by timothy on Thursday November 13, 2008 @05:32PM from the sunday-school-ribbons dept.

Joel Aufgang writes "O'Reilly Media's O'Reilly School of Technology in partnership with the University of Illinois has just launched a Java Programming Certificate Series, which looks like it's intended to compete with the Sun Certified Java Programmer (SCJP) certification. According to O'Reilly's press release, this is not an exam-based certification but rather a series of project based instructor-led courses that, if you pass, earns certification backed by the University of Illinois. Also interesting is the use of Eclipse as the preferred learning platform as opposed to Netbeans."

Submission + - Sun joins the Free Software Foundation

Submitted by Cheeto on Thursday March 01, 2007 @12:06PM

Cheeto writes: Sun Microsystems has joined the FSF! Arstechnica is reporting that Sun has joined the corporate patron program, and will be in the same club as other giants such as IBM, Intel, and Google. With Sun releasing Java under the GPL, and the possibility of releasing OpenSolaris under the GPLv3 — do we see Sun now holding the flag of free software instead of Redhat and IBM?

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