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Comment Re:Licensing Variety Creates Choices (Score 1) 151

Making contracts where you lease/rent a game illegal just removes choices/products for everyone on the market

Making motor vehicles without safety features illegal also removes choices/products.

the risk of making them (perpetually maintaining game servers, or giving away massive amounts of IP) were too intimidating to embark upon the project.

Multiplayer video games ought to be designed up front for private servers after end of support, in the same way that motor vehicles are designed up front for the safety of occupants of that vehicle, occupants of other vehicles, and pedestrians.

A choice becomes a Hobson's choice when all sellers in the relevant market choose not to offer an option to buyers, such as an option to run a private server after end of support. A Hobson's choice is no real choice.

Comment Re:It's entertainment (Score 1) 151

If I pay for a movie ticket do I own the movie?

That's advertised up front as the equivalent of a rental. I draw a sharp contrast with buttons labeled "buy" that do not grant equivalent rights to those of the owner of a lawfully made copy.

You've never "owned" media.

Per the copyright statute of Slashdot's home country, Title 17, United States Code:
- A copy is a physical object in which a work is fixed. (Section 101)
- It is not an infringement for the owner of such an object to resell that copy. (Section 109)
- And it is not an infringement for the owner of such an object to make another copy of a computer program in RAM as an essential step of running it. (Section 117)

Comment Re:Can't expect online support forever! (Score 1) 151

Game companies don't always fully own all of the server tech that runs the game. Some or all of it could be licensed and not redistributable.

If it becomes a crime or tort for the server middleware publisher to provide middleware that is "licensed and not redistributable", server middleware publishers will have to either change their standard license terms going forward or close.

Comment Re:Change to a monthly service (Score 1) 151

Until you realize that to keep up with what your friends are playing, you need the equivalent of Netflix, Disney+, Hulu, Paramount+, HBO Max, Peacock, and a bunch of other services. Netflix streaming began as the online extension of Starz, and now Starz is its own separate subscription service.

Comment Beales and Eisenach 2014 (Score 1) 1

I use DuckDuckGo Privacy Tools. I see every single advertisement on John Gruber's blog Daring Fireball and on Read the Docs. DuckDuckGo does not block them because these sites serve ads in a way that respects viewers' privacy. They are contextual, not behavioral.

However, larger sites with a more general audience can't rely on contextual ad placement. Instead, they feel a need to tailor each ad impression to each viewer's interests inferred from observing the viewer's interests across several websites. A 2014 article by Beales and Eisenach reported that behavioral advertising produces triple the cost per thousand impressions (CPM) compared to contextual advertising.[1]

Before Forbes, Wired, and The Atlantic went behind a paywall, they went through a phase of treating privacy tools as ad blockers.[2] The Atlantic's help page insistently mentioned "ad or tracking blockers" in the same breath.

A lot of times, I can get past misclassification of privacy tools as ad blockers by using an extension to turn off all script-in-the-browser for a particular domain.[3] Other times, I find that the website was deliberately made script-dependent. Articles on Reuters didn't load for me last I checked a couple days ago. Instead, I got a notice to reenable JS and turn off ad blockers.

[1] JavaScript Switcher by meetDeveloper on Mozilla Add-ons
[2] Doc Searls. "An invitation to settle matters with @Forbes, @Wired and other publishers" (April 15, 2016).
[3] Beales, Howard and Eisenach, Jeffrey A., "An Empirical Analysis of the Value of Information Sharing in the Market for Online Content" (January 2014). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2421... or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn...

Comment Walmart doesn't do tips (Score 1) 80

I don't know if HEB includes a tip, but I know that Walmart doesn't do tips. When I worked in the front end of a Walmart Supercenter six years ago, associates were trained to refuse tips, and if someone insists, to ring it up as a donation to whatever charity Walmart is collecting for at the time. Often that ends up being the nearest Children's Miracle Network hospital.

Comment Diverse double-compiling (Score 1) 136

Do you have the code for the compiler, and compile that yourself too?

If you have three different compilers for a language, and you bootstrap a compiler using all three of them, the first generation (e.g. GCC compiled with QuestionableCC, ShadyCC, or SlopCC) should be functionally identical, and the second generation (GCC compiled with GCC, which was compiled with the other compiler) should be bit-identical. See "Fully Countering Trusting Trust through Diverse Double-Compiling" by David A. Wheeler. Some people have trouble trusting Rust because only the latest stable rustc can compile the latest stable rustc.

Comment Re:Integral layer of the Trusted-Computing/DRM sta (Score 1) 34

Every time people hear what it actually involves is outrage and opposition, at least all the way back to when Intel first announced that they wanted to hardcode identity numbers inside CPUs in 1999. But the corporations involved have been relentless, and have sunk countless billions of dollars steadily forcing it forwards, and building front organizations to obfuscate and whitewash it.

With Windows 11, Microsoft was finally able to FORCE Trusted computing hardware into every new computer. Not just every new Windows computer, but every computer.

Every new Intel PC CPU has built in Trusted Computing enforcement hardware. Every new AMD PC CPU has built in Trusted Computing enforcement hardware. Every new ARM PC CPU has built in Trusted Computing enforcement hardware. The only processor lines that DON'T have it are the microcontrollers.

There are some unlocked smartphones available, but as far as I can determine it's literally impossible to buy a smartphone that doesn't have hardware trusted computing built in.

I specified that enforcing Trusted Computing at the internet access level is still a long term goal, they couldn't get away with it today. However they are well on the way to success. Virtually all new hardware supporting trusted computing, all the front groups rolling out standards and systems, and as it gets incorporated into things everyone is going to increasingly running into situations where they get locked out of stuff if they're not Trusted Computing compliant. Streaming already restricts you to the worst quality if you're not compliant, and it's only going to get worse as pre-Win11 computers fade out and as more things require it.

Comment Re:Integral layer of the Trusted-Computing/DRM sta (Score 1) 34

In the long term, the goal is for ISPs to use NAC/TNC to interrogate your computer for Trusted Computing compliance, and deny you any internet access whatsoever if your machine isn't compliant.

You said home ISPs sought to deploy Trusted Network Connect about 20 years ago. It hasn't happened. What's holding it up? The rise of mobile devices, smart TVs, and other devices incompatible with the remediation means available in quarantine?

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